Proposal Summary
This proposal ends Incentivized Mainnet Program (IMP) incentives for clusters that pay the network fee in SSV on June 30th, 2026.
July 2026 will be a transition period. Any SSV Cluster that migrates to an ETH Cluster during this month will be rewarded for the full month.
The ssv.network DAO (DAO) shall be able to reclaim any unclaimed SSV Cluster rewards from the distributor contract in the First Scheduled Batch of 2027.
The Multi-Sig will fund the Merkle distribution contract directly from the Treasury, thus skipping the Dedicated IMP Multi-Sig Wallet (“DIMS”) and its trigger conditions.
Motivation
Since the passing of the [DIP-11] Mainnet Proposal DAO has known only SSV clusters (clusters where fees are paid in SSV). However, after the passing of [DIP-50] Introduction of Effective Balance Oracles, Effective Balance Accounting, ETH-denominated Payments, and SSV Staking (DIP-50), ETH clusters (clusters where fees are paid in ETH) have been introduced and incentivized through the IMP as well.
Sunsetting SSV cluster incentives is a technical and economic necessity driven by their architectural divergence from the DIP-50 framework, the post-Pectra Ethereum environment, and the introduction of SSV Staking. SSV clusters operate under legacy static 32 ETH assumptions that are incompatible with effective balances, creating a critical accounting failure for consolidated validators. By bypassing the on-chain Effective Balance Oracles (EBO) in favor of off-chain IMP scripts, these clusters introduce unnecessary technical debt and protocol fragmentation. Because they do not participate in the ETH-denominated fee model, they provide no utility to the cSSV staking economy, making the continued subsidization of this legacy infrastructure a drain on resources that fails to align with the protocol’s move toward native, on-chain enforcement.
The DAO acknowledges that SSV Clusters registered before the date of this proposal made operational decisions in reliance on the original IMP terms. To balance the technical and economical necessity described above with reasonable reliance interests, this proposal allows a transition period until the end of July 2026. Furthermore, it preserves the right to migrate to an ETH Cluster at any time and to resume earning incentives from the migration date forward, prorated on the month of migration.
The MC will stop minting rewards to the DIMS to reduce overhead, which currently includes multiple transactions and complex trigger logic to fund the IMP merkle root distribution contract. The logic behind the DIMS was to improve tracking of IMP rewards. This is no longer needed, as the DAO now tracks IMP rewards more thoroughly through a dedicated, publicly available source of information.
Mechanics
SSV cluster incentives shall end on June 30, 2026. From July 1, 2026 onward, only validators operating in ETH clusters accrue incentives. Migration from SSV to ETH clusters is supported at any time before or after that date.
Because the DAO wishes to give participants more time to get their operations in order, July 2026 will serve as a transition month: any SSV Cluster that migrates to an ETH Cluster at any point during July 2026 will be treated as if it had operated as an ETH Cluster for the whole of July 2026 and will receive the full July 2026 incentive, regardless of the specific date in July on which it completes its migration.
Amendment
If this proposal were to pass, the Incentivized Mainnet Program proposal will be amended from the original wording of:
Any validator that has registered to the ssv.network after October 1st, 2023, until the end of the Incentivized Mainnet program or the exhaustion of SSV in the Dedicated Multi-Sig wallet.
To the new wording of:
Any validator that has registered to the ssv.network after April 20th, 2026, until the end of the Incentivized Mainnet program;
Also, the following wording will be deleted:
If the amount of remaining tokens on the Dedicated Multi-Sig wallet was to go below 100.000 SSV, the ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig will mint additional SSV tokens so that the Dedicated Multi-Sig wallet’s amount of SSV is 200.000 SSV.
By deleting this wording, the MC is no longer required to top up the DIMS wallet, meaning that in the future, the results of the IMP Administrator’s calculations will be funded directly from the Treasury to the merkle root distribution contract, while the remaining SSV in the DIMS wallet will be used for future distributions until exhausted.
Operational
To accomplish the reclaiming of unclaimed rewards by the DAO, as described above, on January 2, 2027, the ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig Committee (MC) will batch the relevant transactions in the First Scheduled Batch in the following order:
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The IMP Administrator will provide the MC with a merkle root that attests to all unclaimed rewards being attributed to the DAO Treasury address. The IMP Administrator will document the required steps on the DAO forum and follow the general workflow of a regular IMP round.
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The MC will update the merkle distributor contract (v1-imp.ssvnetwork.eth) with the provided merkle root and immediately claim all remaining rewards to the DAO Treasury.
The Foundation shall publish a transaction receipt and a public attestation confirming the completed sequence within 7 days of execution.
By the date of execution, at least six (6) months and one (1) day will have elapsed since SSV Clusters’ last accrued incentives under the IMP (June 30, 2026). The DAO finds this period to be a reasonable claim window in light of the monthly notice requirements described below.
To ensure that holders of unclaimed SSV Cluster rewards have actual and continuing notice of the closing of the claim window, the Foundation is hereby instructed to publish a notice, informing potential holders of the deadline for claiming rewards, on communications channels at its disposal at the relevant time, such as the official ssv.network Discord (#announcements channel), the official ssv.network X (Twitter) account, the ssv.network DAO governance forum, the ssv.network website. The notice shall be posted at least once per calendar month from the month following the passage.
