Rocket Pool proposes defaulting Smart Node minipools to the latest delegate

What happened

Rocket Pool opened the RPIP-77 vote to make Smart Node-managed minipools use the latest delegate and remove supported configuration for older delegate implementations.

What changed

The proposal would increase governance's practical ability to propagate approved minipool logic through the supported Smart Node path and reduce delegate-version fragmentation.

What did not change

At the January window boundary, the vote was still open and no Smart Node update was confirmed released or adopted. Non-Smart Node users would not be forced to change delegates.

Confirmed

• The official vote opened on 2026-01-23.
• The proposal states that only 7% of operators had proactively selected the latest delegate.
• A positive result would lead to a Smart Node update changing defaults and removing supported older-delegate options.

Still open

• The vote did not close until 2026-02-06, outside the backfill window.
• Implementation timing, release contents, adoption, and any later enforcement mechanism were not established within January.

What it means for an advisor

• Monitor the vote and resulting Smart Node release because delegate propagation changes the practical control model for legacy minipools.
• Do not infer that governance-approved logic became universal or that non-Smart Node operators lost their ability to retain older delegates.