Context
Berachain has recently passed the BECTRA upgrade. Through this upgrade Berachain has activated Execution layer triggerable withdrawals as Ethereum have done with PECTRA.
Smilee LST was built before such an upgrade, following pre-PECTRA Ethereum specs. Therefore, Smilee is designed to work with “Voluntary exit”, the canonical Ethereum withdrawals, which are withdrawal messages signed by the validator with its private key.
After discussion with the Berachain core team, Berachain confirmed it will not support Voluntary exit and rely solely on Execution layer triggerable withdrawals.
This proposal, defined together with the Berachain core team, aims to align Smilee to the new specs becoming fully compatible with BECTRA.
Proposal
To account for Bectra withdrawal functionality, we ask to remove Smilee validator from the active set.
This would automatically trigger a withdrawal, which would allow Smilee to set-up a new validator in a BECTRA compatible setting. Smilee commits to stake all such funds with the newly set-up validator.
The plan has been already validated with the Berachain CORE team and does not require any additional effort on their side.
Smilee Role and Contributions To Berachain Ecosystem
Smilee gained lots of traction since the first early days of Bartio, creating a huge mindshare within the Berachain community. With 4.8 million BERA staked by team, investors and community, Smilee confirmed its positioning as one of the most promising dApp in the whole chain.
The new wgBERA bribing system, laying the foundation for the “Killing Proof of Stake” narrative and fully embracing PoL, gave already incredible results with more than 37,000 wgBERA for bribes within three weeks (without considering external bribing from partners).
Smilee validator is especially important as it is a key asset to ensure a minimum stream of BGT to BERA-paired main pools (such as the two wgBERA/BERA on Berahub and Burrbear), meaning that we’re both leveraging PoL and validators to attract key liquidity in the ecosystem.
