David Rugendyke is the CTO and Founder of Rocket Pool, a decentralized Ethereum staking platform. He is also a Senior Ethereum Solidity Developer. ^[1]

Education

David Rugendyke attended Southern Cross University in 1998 and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in 2001. ^[1]

Career

David Rugendyke began his career in 2006 as a Senior Programmer at Clemenger BBDO Brisbane until 2011. In 2013 he became a Senior Digital Developer at George Patterson Y&R until 2017. ^[1]

Rocket Pool

David Rugendyke founded Rocket Pool in 2017 where he serves as the CTO of the company. Rocket Pool is a decentralized Ethereum staking platform. It offers two methods of staking Ethereum staking and running a node which requires a minimum of 16 ETH half the amount needed to run a node or just staking which requires a minimum of only 0.01 ETH. ^[3]

Rocket Pool's smart contracts have been audited by Sigma Prime, Consensys Diligence, Trail of Bits, and Immunefi Bug Bounty.

"The problem Rocket Pool is trying to solve is the barrier to entry for staking in ethereum and
also the ability to stake without running a node with the rETH token"^[2]

On November 9, 2022, Rocket Pool celebrated its first mainnet birthday and made a recap of the highlights made during the previous year. Some of these include the development of the rETH token of the protocol, Node operators, a TVL (total value locked) of 300,000 ETH staked and 7,600,000 RPL staked, etc. ^[4]

"It’s been a journey and one that we’re extremely proud to have undertaken alongside our great community and all others who’ve helped decentralised staking become a real option against a multitude of centralised choices." - David Rugendyke ^[4]

On March 3, 2023, Rocket Pool announced the protocol’s next major upgrade, Atlas. Atlas is Rocket Pool’s second major upgrade since launching to mainnet. The significant upgrade makes the protocol compatible with Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade which will permit validators to initiate withdrawals of their staked ETH on the Beacon Chain. It also introduces improvements ranging from simple gas optimizations to major architecture changes aimed at scaling Rocket Pool. ^[5]