Rocket Pool is a decentralized ETH Liquid Staking Derivative (LSD) provider.
RPL is the native token of the project. The current use cases for RPL include:
Node operation: Node operators need to stake 10% of the validator’s ETH value in RPL.
Governance: RPL is required for on-chain governance for the protocol.
The project consists of the following major components working in conjunction:
Minipool: Rocket Pool nodes only need to deposit 16 ETH per validator. This will be coupled with 16 ETH from the staking pool to create a new Ethereum validator, which is called a minipool.
rETH: Users can stake ETH to receive rETH. rETH is a non-rebase token, so the amount of ETH backing rETH will increase over time through the staking rewards.
Decentralization: All of the creation, withdrawing, and rewards delegation is handled by Rocket Pool's smart contracts on the Execution layer. This makes it completely decentralized.
As at January 18th 2023, the total token supply of RPL is 18,970,871. The current circulating supply is 10,279,742 (~54.19% of total supply).