Who Are We?
Obol Labs is a remote-first research and software development team focused on Proof of Stake infrastructure for public blockchain networks. Specific topics of focus are Internet Bonds, Distributed Validator Technology, and Multi-Operator Validation. The core team includes 14 members spread across 8 countries.
The core team is building the Obol Network, a protocol to foster trust-minimized staking through multi-operator validation. This will enable low-trust access to Ethereum staking yield, which can be used as a core building block in various Web3 products.
The Network
The network can be best visualized as a work layer that sits directly on top of the base layer consensus. This work layer is designed to provide the base layer with more resiliency and decentralization as it scales. In this chapter of Ethereum, we will move on to the next great scaling challenge, which is stake centralization. Layers like Obol are critical to the long-term viability and resiliency of public networks, especially networks like Ethereum.
Obol as a layer is focused on scaling main chain staking by providing permissionless access to Distributed Validators. The network utilizes a middleware implementation of Distributed Validator Technology (DVT), to enable the operation of distributed validator clusters that can preserve validators' current client and remote signing configurations.
Similar to how roll-up technology laid the foundation for L2 scaling implementations, we believe DVT will do the same for scaling the consensus layer while preserving decentralization. Staking infrastructure is entering its protocol phase of evolution, which must include trust-minimized staking networks that can be plugged into at scale. We believe DVT will evolve into a widely used primitive and will ensure the security, resiliency, and decentralization of public networks.
The Obol Network develops and maintains four core public goods that will eventually work together through circular economics:
The DV Launchpad, a User Interface for bootstrapping and managing Distributed Validators
Charon, a middleware Golang client that enables validators to run in a fault-tolerant, distributed manner
Obol Managers, a set of solidity libraries for the formation of Distributed Validators tailored to different use cases such as DeFi, Liquid Staking, and Fractionalized DepositsÂ
Obol Testnets, a set of ongoing public incentivized testnets that enable any sized operator to test their deployment before serving for the Ethereum Main net
Sustainable Public Goods
Obol is inspired by previous work on Ethereum public goods and experimenting with circular economics. We believe that to unlock innovation in staking use cases, a credibly neutral layer must exist for innovation to flow and evolve vertically. Without this layer, highly available uptime will continue to be a moat.
The Obol Network will become an open, community-governed, self-sustaining project over the coming months and years. Together we will incentivize, build, and maintain distributed validator technology that makes public networks a more secure and resilient foundation to build on top of.
Senior Software Engineer, Solidity
Senior Solidity Engineers are passionate about decentralization and have a thorough understanding of the EVM. This role is responsible for driving the direction of the Obol Manager smart contract implementation(s) from early architecture and design documents, through to gas golfing and layer 2 scaling; while building up a professional smart contract engineering team in the process. At Obol we are stripping Ethereum clients down to their fundamentals and rebuilding them in a highly-available by default, byzantine tolerant architecture, capable of being run by multiple operators. This project will push the envelope on distributed systems and their coordination via smart contracts beyond what has been seen in the space to date.
Responsibilities
- Develop EVM smart contracts for the provisioning of Ethereum validators
- Build an enterprise grade smart contract development lifecycle that grows with the Obol team
- Develop robust smart contract testing infrastructure. (unit, symbolic, mainnet-fork, fuzz, etc)
- Manage professional smart contract deployment and monitoring processes
- Participate in the technical interview process
- Develop hackathon friendly smart contract template repos for people to try out ObolÂ
- Develop integration smart contracts into existing liquid staking solutions
- Oversee the solidity audit process pre-mainnet
What you will like about us
- Developing open source public goods for permissionless networks
- Solving groundbreaking problems in distributed cryptography and cryptoeconomics
- Competitive compensation and benefits
- Twice annual Global Off-sites
- Annual opportunity to attend DevCon (or a blockchain conference of choice)
- Opportunity to collaborate with industry leading cryptography researchers and advisors
- Opportunity to collaborate with industry leading validators
- Opportunity to collaborate with Ethereum core client teams
ð°ï¸ In order to scale efficiently, we focus our hiring on candidates able to work during the standard business hours of the following timezones: GMT-8 to GMT+3.
This does not mean that you have to be located in these timezones to get the job but must be able to work the bulk of your time during their standard business hours.
â ï¸ This role has been hired for but we are keeping the application open as we are growing fast and are always open to great talent â ï¸