NelsonRodMar.base.eth

Winding down Diva We're really sorry to be writing this, but after a lot of deliberation we've decided to wind down Diva. We won't be launching on mainnet. To everyone who pre-deposited in the Early Staker Vaults: we're sorry, and thank you for trusting us for so long. You can withdraw your deposits from Enzyme. There is nothing left to wait for. We want to be honest about why. We ran out of funds in mid-2024. Since then, three of us kept going with no revenue and no salary, because we were convinced Ethereum needed this: a way for anyone to stake while validator keys stay out of the control of a handful of centralized players. But after almost two and a half years without a salary, we can't keep going like this. Diva launched on Hoodi early this summer and it has been running for four months without a single failure. Still, no big player was willing to help us launch it, and three people without salaries can't afford new audits, or to launch and maintain a protocol this complex. AI helped us finish it, but it also makes finding vulnerabilities easier every month, and with so many moving pieces, the risk that something slipped past our audits and puts users' funds at risk is real. Security comes first. So instead of launching recklessly, we'd rather be honest, close this properly and move on. After everything that has happened, we think that will be good for all of us. The market also changed. Before Shapella, an LST was the only way to get liquidity on staked ETH. LSTs still have value, but with exits enabled and arbitrage between staking and DEXes, demand is very different. Restaking brought some of it back for a while, but that demand was never really proven and interest faded. The decentralization problem changed too. When we started, Lido was close to a third of all staked ETH, a real risk for the protocol. Today it's around 21%. But a lot of the new stake went to big centralized players. At the end of June, BitMine alone had 11.5% of all staked ETH, Coinbase 10.9% and Binance 7.9%. That's 30% between three companies, about the same share Lido had when we were all worried about Lido. Back then there was a real hunger for decentralization and diversity, like with client diversity. Today what matters is compliance, ETFs, regulation, who the UBO is and who takes responsibility. Even on-chain staking protocols have long-term deals with big LPs, with guarantees and agreed rewards. In that world, decentralized protocols are at a disadvantage. The challenge now is making sure exchanges, banks and treasury companies don't turn Ethereum into an oligopoly. Individual stakers matter for the network. Without them, decentralization is just an illusion. On that note, we want to congratulate @LidoFinance on everything they've achieved since we were all debating staking centralization back in 2023. They brought in DVT with Simple DVT and opened the protocol to solo stakers, whose share keeps growing. We're really glad they kept their word and are still pushing to decentralize it. We want to thank everyone who supported us: the testnet participants, the Diva and Ethereum fans, our investors, our team, and everyone who got excited about what we were building together. We're sorry it ends this way. We really wish we were writing the mainnet announcement instead. Our two colleagues, Diego and Fernando, stayed with us until the end and are now open to new opportunities. They are excellent professionals and we don't think they'll be available for long. Whoever gets them will be lucky. If you'd like references, send us a DM and we'll put you in touch. Thank you all for reading 🫶 and hopefully we'll see each other in the future 🫡