The ssv.network DAO proposes to enter into a two-year agreement between the SSV Foundation and Sigma Prime for the continued maintenance and strategic development of the Anchor client, the second client for the SSV Network.
The agreement covers a comprehensive scope of work, including mandatory protocol upgrades, key improvements, and community support, ensuring the Anchor client remains stable and feature-complete.
The total contract value is $2.5M USD, paid in quarterly milestones over a 24-month period, starting on the 1st of January 2026.
Client Maintenance: Continuous updates to Anchor to support all planned Ethereum (e.g., Glamsterdam) and SSV Network protocol upgrades.
Key Improvements: Research and implementation of high-impact features like Checkpoint Syncing for SSV nodes, networking optimizations, and design/prototyping of a Leaderless Consensus mechanism.
Future Research: Exploration of next-generation improvements, such as enhanced block propagation techniques and state transition applications.
Terms
If this proposal passes, key terms and conditions will be incorporated into the service agreement between Sigma Prime and the SSV Foundation, with the SSV Foundation having discretion to add further terms for the DAO’s benefit.
Contract Value: A total contract value of $2.5M USD is requested for a two-year maintenance package, starting January 1, 2026, and ending December 2027.
Payment Schedule: The contract will be paid in eight equal quarterly milestones of $312.5k USD each, as detailed in the Statement of Work.
Payment Split and Floor Price:
First 12 Months: Payment split is 30% SSV / 70% USDC, with a $1.5 SSV floor price.
After 12 Months: Payment split shifts to 70% SSV / 30% USDC. The SSV floor price will be recalculated quarterly as the 7-day moving average price on the first of the quarter minus 50%, with a minimum fixed floor of $0.75.
The price of $SSV is defined as the 30-day trailing moving average of the market price, calculated as of the first (1st) day of the following quarter.
License and Open Source
The Anchor client must remain fully open-source and licensed under Apache 2.0.
Previous Agreements: If passed, a new agreement will enter into force, completely replacing the previous agreement and rendering the remaining milestones obsolete.
Budget
This expense hasn’t been part of the original 4-year DAO budget in DIP-26. Given the tight market conditions, the following budget spillover and reallocations are proposed to finance this development without exceeding the DAO’s budget.
Budget
Spillover Budget
Allocated to Anchor
2025
Grants Budget
$500k
$500k
$500k
BizDev Budget
$500k
$245k
$245k
Sub-Total
$745k
Budget
New Budget
Allocated to Anchor
2026
Grants Budget
$500k
$100k
$400k
BizDev Budget
$500k
$150k
$350k
DAO Committee
$300k
$250k
$50k
2027
Grants Budget
$500k
$100k
$400k
BizDev Budget
$500k
$150k
$350k
DAO Committees
$300k
$250k
$50k
Sub-Total
$1.6M
+ Buffer (10%)*
$1.76M
Total
$2.5M
*As granted by the DAO in DIP-26
If this proposal passes, the original DIP-26 budget will be updated accordingly and reported here.
I recommend adding the DKG tool to the list of deliverables.
They could incorporate the existing SSV DKG tool, or develop their own.
This was observed as an unfilled need in the Dappnode implementation beta. While the client works fine, it can’t support any DKG-based keys without that component.
Fully support keeping Anchor maintained—client diversity is an absolute must for us.
I have a quick question regarding the budget and Scope of Work. Features like Leaderless Consensus and Checkpoint Syncing are massive architectural upgrades that will definitely require extensive external security audits before hitting mainnet.
Are the costs for these external audits included in the $2.5M contract?
Update: Sigma Prime has updated the attached proposal to include DKG and dAppNode support as per popular request. We thank Sigma Prime for their flexibility.
Hi all, posting a short status update on behalf of the Anchor team ahead of the Milestone 1 payment. Thank you to the DAO and to SSV Labs for the continued collaboration this quarter.
Milestone 1 (Jan–Mar 2026): Boole fork
Implementation of the three approved SSV improvements is complete on the unstable branch and queued for the v2.0.0 release:
Where we are right now: devnet testing is in progress with SSV Labs, running mixed clusters of Anchor and ssv-node operators on Boole branches. Mixed-client committees are producing and submitting attestations and other duties successfully, which gives us early confidence in cross-client consensus under the new fork rules. We presented Anchor’s SSV interoperability work at EthCC[9] in Cannes at the end of Q1. Next up: testnet interop with SSV Labs, followed by mainnet readiness initiatives. We will post the v2.0.0 release alongside the fork-activation schedule once that sequence is complete.
Milestone 2 (Apr–Jun 2026): early progress
A few of the Milestone 2 items are already underway:
DKG interop with ssv-dkg. We have run a full 4-operator offline ceremony end-to-end against upstream ssv-dkg v3.0.3 using Anchor-produced operator keys, with independent verification of the share-decrypt, contract-signature, and deposit-signature paths. Initial interop results are encouraging. Remaining work includes on-chain end-to-end validation on Hoodi, runtime duty execution with DKG-produced shares, and operator-facing documentation for the sidecar flow. Writeup and next steps: sigp/anchor#950.
Dappnode integration. The Anchor package is in active co-development with the DAppNode team, with mainnet and Hoodi testnet variants both in place. We are iterating on the operator setup UX ahead of a public DAppNode marketplace release. Repo: dappnode/DAppNodePackage-anchor-generic.
Glamsterdam / ePBS impact assessment. Initial protocol-change analysis has started; the formal SIP will follow after community input from SSV Labs.
Checkpoint syncing and networking message-content optimizations are scheduled for later in Q2.
