Welcome to this tutorial, where I will guide you through the process of setting up your initial Taiko node and even become an active participant in the network, either as a proposer or a prover. In case you need assistance with anything, reach out to our community members on our Discord server.

Lately, there's been a buzz surrounding concerns about Lido's decentralization. To address this issue, several liquid staking protocols have sprung up, attempting to challenge Lido's dominance. However, this proliferation of solutions could lead to fragmented liquidity, leaving users in a quandary over which Liquid Staking Token (LST) to opt for.

In recent years, a plethora of liquid staking protocols have surfaced, including notable ones like Lido, RocketPool, Frax, Swell, StakeWise, Stader and others. Naturally, each protocol comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. In this discussion, we'll delve into what, in my opinion, constitutes an ideal staking protocol. Of course, it's important to acknowledge that every user has distinct requirements, and I aim to address a broad spectrum of needs within this article.

I recently shared a Twitter thread addressing an issue with RocketPool's withdrawal mechanism and its potential to discourage large stakers from utilizing the protocol. In this post, I'll delve deeper into the key points discussed in that thread. It's important to note that while my focus is on RocketPool, the observations I make here can be applicable to any protocol that enables permissionless node operators to carry out validation, such as Stader (coming soon) and Lido V2(coming soon).

In December 2020, the Beacon Chain was officially launched. Over the following months, several centralized exchanges began developing their own Staking as a Service (SaaS) solutions. With time, retail investors realized that staking ETH on platforms like Coinbase or Binance was much easier than acquiring 32 ETH and running a solo validator. However, the Beacon Chain encountered an issue as the stake started to concentrate in the hands of a few large corporations. Many teams began working on solutions to enable anyone to stake their ETH in a decentralized manner, leading to the birth of Lido. Since then, the protocol has become increasingly problematic, currently accounting for over 32% of the total stake according to rated.network. Several other protocols, such as RocketPool's rETH, Frax's frxETH and soon Stader’s ETHx, are now emerging to compete for market share with Lido.