[DIP-31] Development Roadmap and Project Promotion Services for 2025-mid-2026 by SSV Labs

Proposals DIP (DAO Improvement)
1

Proposal Summary

SSV Labs is proposing to the ssv.network DAO (hereinafter: “DAO”) to continue engaging SSV Labs for the Development of the ssv.network protocol and the promotion of the project.

Motivation

Whereas ssv.network is an open-source project and protocol, and the DAO has a vested interest in attracting contributors to its development, and in light of the DAO’s commitment to advancing the ssv.network, SSV Labs hereby proposes to contribute its development efforts to the project.

SSV Labs has contributed to the code behind the ssv.network protocol, acting in accordance with passed DAO proposals, for the improvement of the protocol. SSV Labs efforts were aimed at making sure that the tech owned by the DAO is on the forefront of the staking industry.

The work proposed below, already underway as of the beginning of 2025, is estimated to take 18 months to complete. SSV Labs believes that such a long term commitment is indispensable to a proper functioning of the protocol.

On the marketing front, if the proposal were to pass, SSV Labs will spearhead the new paradigm of staking with based applications and SSV 2.0. If approved, SSV Labs will continue its positioning of the protocol as the premier place for staking and beyond.

This proposal outlines efforts for maintaining and potentially improving various aspects of the ssv.network and beyond, if the proposal were to be approved. Also, the proposals requests from the DAO 15.000.000 USD denominated in SSV for these efforts which have started January 1st 2025 and will end with 31st of June 2026. After June 31st 2026, SSV Labs will retain the ability to provide these services uncompensated, until such a time that a new proposal is proposed.

These development efforts require a substantial team and a number of employees, including developers, product managers, and designers. It will further require cloud services for hosting, testing and production environments, DevOps services, and audits of the smart contracts by a reliable third party. This is far from a comprehensive list of expected costs that SSV Labs bears and will continue to bear. Still, SSV Labs is willing to bear a substantial part of the costs for the benefit of the project and the DAO.

Proposal Particulars

  1. Development Roadmap
  2. Project Promotion
  3. Finances
  4. Operational

Development Roadmap

SSV Labs wishes to provide a comprehensive Development Roadmap and substantial efforts, and to continue providing existing efforts in the best interest of the DAO, allowing it to have tech that is on the forefront of staking and beyond. In its commitment to transparency for the community, each of the services, next to them, will have a rough estimated effort breakdown in percentages. This will allow the community to understand which parts of development are the most complex or require the most dedication.

The roadmap and efforts shall include:

DVT Network (50%)

SSV Node (25%)

  1. SSV Node Exporter (5%) - An enhancement to the SSV Node Exporter will enable it to store and expose more detailed information about the duty lifecycle within validator clusters. This will provide a clearer breakdown of the consensus process, offering greater transparency into validator operations. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Expanded Duty Lifecycle Tracking: Updating the SSV Exporter Node to store and expose additional phases of the consensus process beyond just the final decided message.

    2. Explorer Visualization: The newly collected data will be incorporated into the SSV Explorer, providing a visual representation of validator duties and consensus progress.

This update enhances transparency into cluster operations, significantly improving the ability to diagnose consensus failures and troubleshoot underperforming clusters and operators.

  1. Protocol Compatibility (10%) - Pectra introduces breaking changes to the Ethereum protocol, requiring modifications to the SSV Node to ensure that validators on the network remain operational after the upgrade. This includes adapting to new consensus mechanisms and making necessary changes to validator execution processes.

  2. SSV Pulse (5%) - Is a standalone CLI tool designed to help operators assess and optimize the performance of their SSV Node. By providing real-time diagnostics and historical analysis, it enables operators to identify and resolve issues related to resource usage, network connectivity, and validator performance. Its key capabilities are:

    1. System Benchmarking: Evaluates the health and efficiency of an operator’s infrastructure and client connections over time.

    2. Log Analysis: Aggregates and processes logs to detect performance issues and misconfigurations.

By leveraging SSV Pulse, operators can optimize their node’s stability and performance, ensuring smooth validator operations within the network by proactively addressing problems affecting node reliability and validator duties.

  1. Doppelganger Protection (3%) - Is an SSV Node update designed to prevent validators from accidentally running in multiple instances simultaneously, whether in other vanilla setups or other SSV client instances using the same operator key, which could lead to slashing. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Beacon Node Liveness Tracking: Ensures that a validator is not actively signing elsewhere before allowing it to operate within SSV Network.

    2. Post-Consensus Validation: Utilizes multiple operators within the network to confirm validator status before signing duties.

By integrating Doppelganger Protection, SSV enhances validator security by preventing accidental double-signing and significantly reducing the risk of slashing penalties. This is especially beneficial for validators migrating to SSV, ensuring they can seamlessly onboard while mitigating risks. This seamless approach is achieved by validators not having to wait for a few epochs of the beacon chain to recognize that their validator has been shut down, and then restarted, which leads to lost rewards in the interim. This effect scales per validator, and can lead to substantial lost rewards if doppelganger protection is not instituted.

  1. Multi EL/CL Clients Support (6%) - Introduces new capabilities to the SSV Node, enabling support for multiple Execution Layer (EL) and Consensus Layer (CL) endpoints. These enhancements strengthen network reliability by introducing redundancy, improving failover mechanisms, and optimizing validator performance. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Failover Mechanism (Released - v2.2.0): Enables the configuration of multiple EL and CL endpoints. If one becomes faulty, the node seamlessly switches to the next available endpoint to ensure validator uptime.

    2. Optimized Data Selection: Introduces an advanced scoring mechanism to evaluate multiple EL/CL endpoint responses, selecting the most accurate attestation data while minimizing redundant calls. This approach improves data reliability, enhances performance efficiency with minimal overhead, optimizes head slot retrieval with caching, and prioritizes the highest-scoring data to reduce delays.

These updates collectively enhance validator stability, fault tolerance, and network robustness. By ensuring continuous validator activity, selecting the most reliable attestation data, and improving redundancy, the SSV Network becomes more resilient and efficient, providing operators with a stronger and more reliable staking infrastructure.

  1. Custom Gas Limit Configuration (1%) - To align with Ethereum’s initiative to increase the block gas limit, an update was introduced to the SSV Node, allowing operators to configure the gas limit when sending validator registrations to MEV relays through the Beacon node. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Configurable Gas Limit: Enables setting a preferred gas limit for validator registrations, ensuring compatibility with Ethereum’s evolving network parameters.

This update enhances network adaptability, ensuring that the SSV Node remains flexible as Ethereum’s block gas limits evolve. By providing greater configurability, operators can optimize their validator operations while maintaining efficiency and compatibility with the broader Ethereum ecosystem.

  1. Remote Signer Support (5%) - An update to the SSV Node to add support for remote signing, aligning with EIP-3030, Ethereum’s standard for securely signing BLS keys remotely. This feature enhances security by decoupling key management from the node itself, enabling validator key shares to be stored externally using a compatible remote signer, while operator keys can be managed with SSV-Signer, a lightweight remote signer inspired by Web3Signer. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Secure Key Management: Removes the need for storing validator key shares and operator keys locally, reducing security risks.

    2. EIP-3030 & Web3Signer Compatibility: Implements Ethereum’s standard for remote signing (EIP-3030) and integrates an embedded slashing protection database, ensuring full compliance with best practices.

    3. High-Performance Signing: Maintains low-latency signing response times while operating within defined resource constraints.

    4. Seamless Transition: Provides an easy migration path from local key management to remote signing without disrupting validator operations

This update enhances the security posture of SSV Node, ensuring robust key management while maintaining high reliability and efficiency in validator operations.

  1. Pre-Confirmations (10%) - Pre-confirmations allow Ethereum validators to make commitments on transaction inclusion before full block confirmation, offering additional rewards and improving transaction finality. As staking ecosystems increasingly adopt pre-confirmations, it is essential for validators in the SSV Network to be able to opt in and participate in these commitments within a DVT environment. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Commit-Boost & Pre-confirmation Provider Collaboration: Engaging with Commit-Boost and leading pre-confirmation providers (e.g., ETHGas, Primev) to ensure that their solutions are designed with DVT compatibility in mind. This includes active participation in testnets and working towards seamless integration as these functionalities transition to mainnet.

    2. DVT Signer for Pre-confirmations: Enhancing the SSV Node to expose an endpoint that enables validator clusters to sign non-consensus duties using the validator key. This is a critical requirement for Commit-Boost integration, as many pre-confirmation functionalities will operate through its modular sidecar.

    3. Seamless Network Integration: Researching the optimal approach for pre-confirmation functionality adoption within SSV Network, similar to how MEV-Boost was integrated. This may include updates to the SSV Webapp, enhanced operator metadata, and user-friendly interfaces for managing pre-confirmation functionalities alongside MEV relays.

As Ethereum staking mechanisms evolve, pre-confirmations are set to play a significant role in validator economics and network efficiency. Ensuring that SSV Network remains compatible with these emerging mechanisms reinforces its position as a leading decentralized validator infrastructure, enabling its users to seamlessly adopt innovative staking solutions and maximize validator performance.

  1. Migration to OpenTelemetry for Enhanced Observability (2%) - As SSV Network scales, effective monitoring and observability become critical for maintaining validator performance, diagnosing issues, and optimizing network operations. To achieve greater visibility and standardization, we have migrated the SSV Node observability stack to OpenTelemetry, an industry-standard framework for telemetry data collection. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Unified Telemetry Pipeline: Standardized the collection of metrics, traces, and logs within the SSV Node using OpenTelemetry, replacing the previous fragmented approach.

    2. Enhanced Debugging & Monitoring: Provides deeper insights into node performance, validator duties, and potential bottlenecks by correlating logs, metrics, and traces.

    3. Interoperability & Extensibility: Allows integration with existing observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger) used by Ethereum staking operators.

    4. Reduced Overhead: Optimized how data is collected and processed, improving performance without adding unnecessary strain to validator nodes.

This transition strengthens the monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities of the SSV Network, ensuring operators can efficiently diagnose issues, improve uptime, and optimize validator performance. By aligning with OpenTelemetry, SSV embraces a standardized, scalable observability approach, benefiting both individual operators and large-scale staking providers.

  1. SSV Node Testnet Network (3%) - Maintaining a functioning P2P network for operators on the testnet to simulate real-world validator operations and interactions.

  2. Continuous Node Maintenance and Development (45%)- Implementing networking optimizations within the SSV Node to minimize message load, reduce redundant data transmission, and improve overall network performance.

  3. Documentation (5%)- Documentation will be developed and maintained for the newly implemented features and updates.

SSV Smart Contract (10%)

  1. Dynamic Fee Mechanism (95%): With Pectra increasing the max effective balance per validator from 32 ETH to up to 2048 ETH, SSV must transition from a per-validator fee structure to a validator effective balance-based fee model. This change affects multiple areas of the protocol, including:
    1. Distribution of operator fees from stakers
    2. Distribution of network fees from stakers
    3. Cluster liquidation mechanism
    4. Distribution of incentives within the network’s Incentivized Mainnet Program

Rather than assuming a fixed 32 ETH per validator, a dynamic mechanism will be researched and implemented to ensure fair and proportional fees for all parties while maintaining efficiency. The final approach will be influenced by market adoption trends, partner feedback, and validator consolidation rates.

  1. Testnets (5%) - Maintaining an active and live testnet environment is essential for ensuring the stability, compatibility, and continuous development of the SSV Network. The testnet serves as a controlled environment where new protocol versions can be deployed, tested, and refined before reaching mainnet, allowing for early feedback and issue resolution. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Smart Contracts Deployment: Ensuring that all relevant SSV smart contracts are deployed and maintained on Ethereum’s active permissionless testnet (currently Holesky).

SSV Tooling (5%)

  1. Developer Tooling Support (85%) : Ensuring that all developer tools (e.g., APIs, subgraph, DKG) remain compatible with the testnet, enabling seamless development and integration testing.

The testnet provides SSV Network participants—including developers, operators, and staking providers—with a reliable environment to experiment, validate configurations, and test integrations before deploying to mainnet. This proactive approach minimizes risks, accelerates innovation, and ensures that all protocol upgrades are rigorously tested, reinforcing SSV’s commitment to security, performance, and usability.

  1. Simple DVT (15%): For the duration of this proposal, or the duration of Simple DVT, whichever comes to an end first, SSV Labs will maintain operator relationships and provide testnet resources to the Lido protocol on Ethereum as it has done in the past.

Webapp & Explorer (10%)

  1. Overall Webapp and Explorer Improvements (60%) - As the SSV Network continues to grow, enhancing the Explorer is a key priority to ensure data accessibility, transparency, and usability. In 2025, the Explorer will undergo significant improvements, focusing on aligning features with other SSV Network explorers while integrating new capabilities based on collected user feedback and demands, as well as adjusting to the evolving protocol changes and requirements. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Improved Data Accessibility & Transparency: The Explorer will present richer information about network participants, making it easier for users to understand validator operations and performance.

    2. Beacon Chain Data Integration: Validator statuses on the beacon chain will be incorporated, providing deeper insights into network activity.

    3. Expanded Network Views: Introducing dedicated pages for accounts and clusters, providing a more structured and comprehensive way to view network participants.

    4. Enhanced Search, Sorting & Filtering: Advanced capabilities to explore participants and their configurations efficiently, notably improving operator marketplace usability and helping stakers make informed decisions.

    5. Graphs & Historical Metrics: Operators’ performance and fee trends over time will be visualized, offering valuable insights for network participants.

    6. User Experience Overhaul: All pages will be redesigned to present data in a more intuitive and accessible manner.

    7. Backend Scaling: The backend infrastructure will be optimized to support up to 200,000 validators, ensuring smooth performance and scalability. This will improve speed, accuracy, and the overall user experience of the Explorer, aligning with the substantial growth seen in 2024 and the projected expansion in 2025.

    8. New Exporter Data on the Explorer - The newly collected data will be incorporated into the SSV Explorer, providing a visual representation of validator duties and consensus progress.

  2. Pectra Optimizations (15%): Updates to the SSV Webapp to support bulk operations for registering, removing, and exiting validators under the increased cap.

  3. Seamless Network Integration (15%): Researching the optimal approach for pre-confirmation functionality adoption within SSV Network, similar to how MEV-Boost was integrated. This may include updates to the SSV Webapp, enhanced operator metadata, and user-friendly interfaces for managing pre-confirmation functionalities alongside MEV relays.

  4. Webapp Testnet Compatibility (5%) : Ensuring that the SSV Webapp fully supports the testnet environment, allowing users to interact with and manage validators before mainnet deployment.

SSV Second Client (5%)

A critical step in decentralizing the SSV Network is ensuring client diversity, reducing reliance on a single implementation. To achieve this, Sigma Prime has been engaged to develop Anchor, the second SSV client, providing an alternative implementation that strengthens the resilience and security of the protocol. Its key capabilities include:

  1. Knowledge Transfer & Technical Support: Collaborating closely with Sigma Prime, passing essential knowledge to ensure they align with existing and future developments within the SSV Network.

  2. Specification Inclusion: Integrating Anchor into the ongoing protocol development by including Sigma Prime in new specifications and protocol upgrades.

  3. Implementation Monitoring & Feedback: Conducting periodic reviews, technical discussions, and follow-up meetings to track progress, provide feedback, and ensure smooth development.

By supporting the development of Anchor, SSV enhances client diversity, improving the protocol’s resilience against bugs, security risks, and potential centralization. Ensuring a multi-client ecosystem is a critical milestone in the evolution of SSV, aligning with Ethereum’s broader decentralization goals.

SSV Chain (10%)

The SSV Chain is a dedicated app-chain designed to serve as the coordination layer for bApps and validators within the SSV Network. It addresses scalability, cost efficiency, multi-chain compatibility, and enhanced UX, overcoming limitations imposed by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) while ensuring seamless validator coordination. Its key capabilities include:

  1. Research & Infrastructure Design (85%): Conducting research on the necessary components and modification to the existing DVT network components in order to ensure compatibility with the newly built SSV Chain

  2. SSV Chain Documentation (15%): Draft and maintain comprehensive documentation to allow for easy understanding and transition from DVT Network stack to SSC Chain dependencies.

Formulation and approval of specifications for Development Roadmap 10%

This section describes potential research and updates to the specification for the DVT component of the SSV network.

  1. Scaling Network Topology (100%): To enhance the scalability and efficiency of the SSV Network, we are implementing a network topology upgrade aimed at reducing message overhead and optimizing resource utilization. This upgrade follows the foundational improvements introduced in the Alan Fork and will enable the network to scale to at least 2x the validator count while reducing computational and bandwidth requirements for operators.

Currently, operators receive and forward a significant number of non-committee messages that are not essential for their operations. Research indicates that in some cases, these unnecessary messages account for up to 97% of network traffic. By implementing a greedy algorithm for clustering operators into subnets, the network can significantly reduce non-committee message propagation, leading to lower resource consumption and improved performance.

  1. Specification Update: Revising the network topology specifications to define how validators are assigned to topics, ensuring a more efficient distribution of messages across operators.

  2. Reducing message congestion and hardware requirements will allow the SSV Network to scale more efficiently, improving operator experience and protocol sustainability. Given the complexity of network-wide optimizations, rigorous testing, edge-case analysis, and phased deployment will be crucial to ensuring a smooth transition without unintended disruptions to validator operations. This upgrade is a key milestone in preparing the SSV Network for continued growth and wider adoption.

Audits and Security

Do note that the effort breakdown for Audits and Security is not present due to this work largely being outsourced to industry leading code auditors in the interest of peer review and code transparency. However, the estimated effort is provided for their work below. Ensuring the security, reliability, and efficiency of the SSV Network requires rigorous audits of both new and existing protocol components. As part of this effort, we will conduct audits for two critical upgrades in 2025. Key audits include:

  1. Pre-confirmations Audit (SSV Node + SSV Specifications) (40%): As pre-confirmations introduce a new validator signing flow, an audit will be conducted on the SSV Node and protocol specifications to ensure the integrity and security of the updated signing process, preventing unintended risks to validator operations.

  2. Scaling Network Fork Audit (SSV Node + SSV Specifications) (60%): As part of scaling the SSV Network, an audit will validate the updates introduced in the Scaling Network Fork. This will include reviewing consensus mechanisms, network topologies, and resource utilization to ensure smooth and secure network expansion.

  3. Audits for the node and the ssv spec will include updates that are required for interoperability of those components for pectra.

These audits play a crucial role in safeguarding validator operations, maintaining network robustness, and mitigating potential risks before these upgrades are deployed to mainnet.

Performance and Services Level Expectations (15%)

Ongoing Infrastructure Support and Maintenance - As the SSV Network scales, the demands for technical support and infrastructure maintenance increase proportionally. The SSV Labs engineering team is actively engaged in providing technical assistance to various teams building on the SSV protocol. This includes resolving critical issues, optimizing network performance, and ensuring the reliability of validator operations. As the network’s user base expands, this support becomes increasingly complex, requiring constant vigilance and proactive troubleshooting to maintain system stability.

DIP-31 continues in the reply the original post below

2

As a continuation of DIP-31 above:

SSV 2.0 (50%)

SSV 2.0 represents the next evolution of the SSV protocol, expanding its capabilities beyond Distributed Validator Technology (DVT). By leveraging Ethereum’s validator set, Based Applications introduce a new class of decentralized applications that derive security from existing Ethereum validators, rather than relying on self-bootstrapping mechanisms or solely on capital from restaking protocols.

SSV 2.0 establishes the foundation for Based Applications by creating a structured protocol that enables validators to secure multiple applications, ensuring robust security, decentralization, and scalability. This evolution enhances Ethereum’s validator set not just as a security mechanism for Ethereum itself, but as a security layer for multiple off-chain applications. Its key capabilities are:

SSV Chain Node (15%)

  1. SSV Chain Node (90%): Developing the SSV Chain Node, which will process transactions, maintain the state of based applications and clusters, validate and secure the chain, and enable seamless interactions with the SSV protocol.

  2. SSV Chain Documentation (10%): Providing comprehensive resources and guides to facilitate interactions with the chain and participation as a validator.

Continuous Node Maintenance and Development - As is the case with the DVT Network node, SSV Labs will provide continuous node maintenance and development to the SSV Chain node.

SSV Smart Contract (15%)

  1. SSV 2.0 Based Applications (bApps) (70%) - Are the basis of the SSV 2.0 Smart Contracts that need to be developed.

  2. bAppsSmart Contracts (20%): Developing the core smart contracts for Based Applications:

    1. Core Contracts for creating and managing delegations, strategies and bApps.

    2. Middleware contracts to facilitate integrations between the protocol and bApps.

Developing a comprehensive ecosystem around Based Applications ensures that when SSV v2 reaches market adoption, all necessary infrastructure—protocol, interfaces, tooling, and documentation—is in place. This will accelerate developer adoption, facilitate seamless integrations, and establish SSV v2 as a leading framework for secure, validator-based applications in the evolving decentralized applications.

  1. Testnet (10%) - In order for Based Applications to have a robust development cycle, a dedicated testnet, as is the case with the current testing environment for DVT services. This will be developed and maintained to support smart contract development of Based Applications.

SSV Tooling (5%)

  1. bAppsTestnets (50%)- Maintaining an active and live testnet environment is essential for ensuring the stability, compatibility, and continuous development of SSV v2, including Based Applications and the SSV Chain. The testnet provides a controlled environment where new protocol versions can be deployed, tested, and refined before reaching mainnet, allowing for early feedback and issue resolution. Its key capabilities are:

    1. Based Applications Testnet Deployment: Ensuring that all bApps smart contracts are deployed and maintained on Ethereum’s testnet, enabling developers to test and iterate before mainnet release.

    2. SSV Chain Testnet: Setting up and maintaining a testnet version of the SSV Chain, allowing validators and developers to experiment with chain functionalities in a low-risk environment.

    3. Developer Tooling Support: Ensuring that BA-SDK, APIs, and subgraphs are compatible with the testnet, enabling developers and bApps to integrate and validate their implementations.

The testnet environment plays a crucial role in enabling developers, validators, and bApp creators to experiment, validate configurations, and test integrations before deploying to mainnet. This approach minimizes risks, accelerates innovation, and ensures that all protocol upgrades and enhancements undergo rigorous testing before production deployment, reinforcing SSV’s commitment to security, performance, and usability.

  1. bApps Tooling (50%): To support developers and enhance adoption, we will build a comprehensive tooling suite for Based Applications:

    1. Subgraph for bApps Contracts: Indexing and making bApps contract events easily accessible.

    2. BA-SDK (TypeScript Library): A development toolkit that allows programmatic interaction with bApps smart contracts, supports fetching BA-related data, and enables strategy-based calculations.

    3. Technical Documentation & Example Projects: Guides, resources, code samples, and best practices for developers integrating BAs into their applications.

Webapp & Explorer (15%)

  1. bApps Webapp (60%): Developing a dedicated webapp for Based Applications that enables seamless interactions with the bAppssmart contracts, integrated into the existing SSV DVT Webapp.

  2. Friendly and intuitive interface for managing delegations, strategies, and BA-related actions.

  3. “Explorer” capabilities for exploring and showcasing the bApps, strategies, and operators of the protocol.

  4. bApps Compatibility (15%): Ensuring the bApps Webapp and SSV Chain Explorer fully support testnet environments, providing a seamless user experience for interacting with testnet deployments.

  5. SSV Chain Explorer (25%): Establishing a dedicated block explorer to provide transparency into transactions, validator activities within the SSV Chain, and bApp interactions.

Incentivized Mainnet Program (5%)

With the evolution of SSV 2.0, the Incentivized Mainnet Program could be adapted to drive adoption and usage of the Based Applications protocol. Similar to how the program supported the growth of the SSV Network, this iteration could focus on accelerating SSV v2 adoption, ensuring that developers, operators, validators, and bApps are incentivized to explore and integrate with the new protocol. Its key capabilities include:

  1. Research & Design: Conducting research on how to structure the next phase of the Incentivized Mainnet Program, aligning incentives with bAppsadoption, validator participation, and network growth.

  2. Proposed DAO Configuration: Formulating and presenting a refined incentivization model to the SSV DAO, ensuring that rewards are effectively allocated to encourage long-term participation and sustainability.

By aligning incentives with SSV v2’s growth strategy, the updated Incentivized Mainnet Program will help bootstrap adoption and drive engagement.

SSV Second Client (5%)

Support SSV Chain Second Client Implementation - As Sigma Prime develops the second DVT network node implementation certain adjustments will be required for such an implementation to remain compatible with the newly built SSV Chain, Based Applications and other facets of SSV 2.0. SSV Labs will support Sigma Prime, if Sigma Prime is granted by the DAO to extend their support beyond the DVT Network Node implementation they are currently building. If Sigma Prime is not with such a grant, SSV Labs will support any other team that is granted with implementing support for the second client implementation.

SSV Chain (15%)

  1. Research & Infrastructure Design (90%): Conducting research on infrastructure stacks (e.g., Cosmos SDK) and selecting the optimal consensus mechanism for the app-chain.

  2. SSV Chain Documentation (10%): Comprehensive documentation will be developed and maintained to support the development of the SSV Chain and foster the development community.

The SSV Chain is a significant project that will span multiple development phases beyond 2025, ensuring a structured and responsible transition. The phases outlined are still to be determined and may evolve based on research findings, ecosystem developments, and implementation feedback:

  1. Phase 1 – The chain will mirror the state of Based Applications and DVT contracts without direct interactions.
  2. Phase 2 – Enabling interactions with the chain alongside the existing contracts, gradually shifting key functionalities to the SSV Chain.
  3. Phase 3 – Full migration, where the SSV Chain becomes the gateway for all interactions, and contracts on other chains will serve as relays.

This phased approach ensures a responsible transition while maintaining stability, scalability, and security across the SSV Network.

Formulation and Approval of Specifications for Development Roadmap (15%)

  1. SSV Chain Specifications (65%): Defining the technical specifications to guide development, ensuring compatibility with bApps and validators.

  2. bApps Specifications (35%): Developing formal specifications for the bApps protocol to serve as a technical blueprint for implementation, ensuring consistency, interoperability, and clarity across all bApps components. These specifications provide a structured framework that guides development and integration efforts, allowing for a seamless and scalable ecosystem.

Audits and Security

  1. bApps Contracts Audit: A full security audit of the Based Applications smart contracts, ensuring they function securely and efficiently while preventing vulnerabilities that could impact delegations, strategies, and bApps.

  2. bApps Specifications Audit: A review of the Based Applications specifications to validate protocol consistency, enforceability, and alignment with the SSV v2 architecture.

  3. SSV Chain Audit: A comprehensive audit of the SSV Chain infrastructure, covering consensus mechanisms, transaction processing, validator coordination, and security aspects to ensure a stable and secure execution environment.

Performance and Services Level Expectations (10%)

Ongoing Infrastructure Support and Maintenance (100%) - As the SSV Network scales, especially with the advent of SSV 2.0 and the opportunities and challenges it will bring, infrastructure maintenance increases proportionally. With such a new concept, the SSV Labs engineering team will actively engage in providing technical assistance to various teams building on the SSV protocol. This includes resolving critical issues, optimizing network performance, and ensuring the reliability of validator operations. As the network’s user base expands, this support becomes increasingly complex, requiring constant vigilance and proactive troubleshooting to maintain system stability.

Project Promotion Roadmap

The primary objective of the Project Promotion Roadmap is to further solidify SSV Network’s position in the ecosystem. SSV Labs marketing efforts have driven significant engagement, increased brand awareness, and expanded community participation. To maintain this momentum, we outline necessary funding for PR, branding, community management, events, and other marketing initiatives and services that will shape SSV’s market presence in 2025:

  1. Social Media Management: Development of Twitter, for community engagement and professional outreach.
  2. Events: Organizing and managing professional events and conferences, online and offline, including sponsorship, presence, production, promotion, content, and logistics. We will shift towards fewer, high-impact events and side event sponsorships with a focus on major summits including:
    1. Staking Summit
    2. Token2049
    3. Staking Summit #2
    4. EthCC
    5. Devconnect
    6. Side event sponsorships, in proximity to events from the above list
    7. Online events acceleration (Twitter spaces, podcasts, AMAs etc.), including edited video content, shorts, video based interviews and related giveaways

From the list provided above, at least two events will be attended.

  1. Website Management: Managing a user-friendly ssv.network website with SEO-optimized landing pages. Including an updated ssv.network website for SSV 2.0 and continued maintenance for SSV - DVT website.
  2. Public Relations: direct KOL engagement, Direct media paid campaigns including podcasts and video based AMAs: Ongoing work with a PR agency and/or directly with relevant industry KOLs and/or directly with crypto media outlets to manage media relations, press releases, and crisis communications. Expanded media and social network presence through sponsorships of crypto media. Collaboration with DeFi-specific KOLs to promote educational content via paid tweets. Published content in crypto media, ideally top tier publications.
  3. Community Engagement: Rewarding contributors (SSVDivers), DAO engagement initiatives, and growth tools. Continued moderation and automation improvements for enhanced user experience.
  4. Co-Marketing with Partners: Collaborating with ecosystem partners for broader outreach and community reach.
  5. Newsletter and Communication: Regular newsletters and transparent communication to keep the community informed and connected.
  6. Swag Operations: Creating and distributing branded merchandise (swag) to the ssv.network community members, via swag vendors.
  7. Brand Management: Major brand refresh and upgrade for SSV 2.0. Additional efforts include decks, illustrations, event branding, and digital content production.
  8. Content Creation and Management: Produce diverse and engaging content to educate and captivate SSV’s audience.
  9. Market Research: Keeping up to date with market trends and community needs.
  10. Graphic and Video Production: Ongoing creation of media, videos, and graphics for campaigns and platforms.
  11. Tools & Software Provision: Ensured operational efficiency through high-quality marketing tools. Continued usage of Kaito, Canva, Figma, Hotjar, Google Analytics, and other essential marketing and research platforms.
  12. User Experience Feedback: Gathering feedback to improve our platforms and strategies.
  13. Analytics: Using data analytics to gauge the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

Finances

For the entirety of services listed herein, through mid-2026, SSV Labs is requesting a total grant of 15.000.000 USD denominated in SSV, based on a 6-month moving average calculated on the 1st of the month in which the payment is executed.

All funds shall be sent to the SSV Foundation Treasury by the ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig Committee in the following schedule:

After receiving each tranche the SSV Foundation will effect the payment in 5 days to this address 0x935Cea9196a22E59934Aa036143dEDA0e482f3E4. SSV Labs retains the right to notify the SSV Foundation to execute the transfer to another wallet address.

Operational

The DAO hereby empowers and authorizes the SSV Foundation to draft, execute and deliver a binding agreement, and any other required documents, it may deem necessary and appropriate in order to carry out the purpose of this proposal.

The SSV Foundation has already signed an agreement with SSV Labs that allows for substantial reporting opportunities to the SSV Foundation and, by extension, to the DAO, regarding abilities to inquire about the progress of the grant, including proactive reporting from SSV Labs. These reporting opportunities allow the DAO to provide feedback and suggest features according to the approved scope of this proposal.

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