OIP#3: Obol Collective 2025 Goals - Proposal -

Token House
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Status: [Draft]

Proposal Type: SQUAD Goals

Abstract:

The Obol Association proposes a set of 2025 goals aligned with the SQUAD framework to advance our mission of making Distributed Validators (DVs) the standard for staking. The focus is on accelerating DV adoption, expanding operator and community participation, defining the OBOL token’s role in DeFi and governance, and enhancing decentralized decision-making. These goals aim to strengthen decentralized coordination by providing clear success metrics, and support the ongoing transition toward a community-led governance model. See also Context for SQUAD Governance Goals and setting up what the Collective needs

Motivation:

The Obol Collective stands at a pivotal moment in its journey toward deeper decentralization, broader community engagement, and sustainable ecosystem growth. This proposal is motivated by the need to define clear, community-aligned goals that reflect the evolving role of the Obol Association—as a steward, not a central authority—while enabling active participation from contributors across the ecosystem.

To empower the community, we prioritize transparency so contributors can actively engage in shaping Obol’s future. Below is our 2025 goals proposal, according to the SQUAD Goals Framework.

Any other Collective member is free to submit their own comprehensive SQUAD Goals for the Collective according to the framework or to comment on this proposal as feedback.

The core motivation of this proposal is to offer clarity and structure without imposing rigidity—creating a foundation that supports, rather than constrains, decentralized growth. The Obol Association serves as a steward, not a permanent structure—its role will naturally diminish as governance mechanisms mature and community-driven decision-making takes full effect.

At the core of this proposal is a shared mission, our north star that guides all efforts:

Mission: “Make Obol Distributed Validators (DVs) the standard for staking as the most performant, secure and decentralised way.”

The goals below aim to drive measurable progress toward that mission across four strategic dimensions: DV adoption, Growth, TGE and Governance.

A. Boosting Obol DV Adoption

  1. Deepen DVs penetration into (Re-)Staking Protocols
  • Details: Integrate Obol DVs as the infrastructure layer of Liquid Staking & Restaking Protocols. Protocols represent about 37.5% of the Ethereum stake according to Hildobby’s staking data. Obol DVs currently represent about 2% of that stake. Example workstream: Collaborations with top protocols existing and new products (e.g., Lido v3, Etherfi eETH, Swell rswETH).
  • Success Metrics: Make Obol DVs 25% of the Protocols Stake share.
  • Collective involvement: Yes
  1. Deepen DVs penetration with Institutions
  • Details: Bring the benefits of DVs to ETFs, insurance providers, custodians, large node operators, and centralised exchanges. Institutions represent the second biggest Ethereum stake after protocols at about 36% according to Hildobby’s staking data. This share is expected to increase with staking ETFs in the US on the horizon. While Obol has been heavily testing with major operators well positioned with institutions, mainnet adoption remains low. Example workstream: Partnerships with major operators and exchanges (e.g. Bitcoin Suisse, Figment, Coinbase, OKX, etc) for staked ETF offerings leveraging Obol for secure, distributed validation.
  • Success Metrics: Make Obol DVs 10% of the Institutions Stake share.
  • Collective involvement: Limited, Managed centrally by Obol Labs/Association
  1. Deepen DVs penetration with community squads
  • Details: Launch more community squads across the globe. Continue building launcher tooling and educational content on DVs to make squad staking easy. Currently Obol community squads run about 15,000 ETH. Example workstream: Programs to assist new node operators in setting up and fund Obol DVs.
  • Success Metrics:
    1. 20 new community squads
    2. 50,000 ETH running on Obol DVs.
  • Collective involvement: Yes

B. Strengthening the Collective: Operators & Community Growth

  1. Increase the Number of “Silver Techne” Operators
  • Details: Train and certify a professional class of operators who can scale networks reliably by running Obol DVs. Currently there is about 600 Silver Techne credentials.
  • Success Metrics: Grow the number of Silver Techne Credentials by 30%.
  • Collective involvement: Yes
  1. Staking Masters
  • Details: The Staking Master program and its two waves has led to massive success in community members picking up small technical tasks that serve various goals described in this proposal. As we move towards a more open and transparent Collective, we aim to make the program more transparent, fair and open to the Collective members.
  • Success Metrics: Post all technical projects and bounties publicly and open access to anyone in the Collective through a grants and bounty management program.
  • Collective involvement:
    1. Setting up and managing the program: Obol Association
    2. Getting involved in making proposals to work on tasks: Obol Collective.

C. Establishing OBOL Token’s Role in DeFi & Governance

  1. Navigate Unlock/TGE
  • Details: Complete the token generation event (TGE) and any unlock stages without undermining the protocol or community trust.
  • Metric: Listing on major CEX exchanges, enabling of staking and unlock as per OIP#1 and OIP#2
  • Collective involvement: Already voted by the Collective, Managed centrally by Obol Labs/Association in its execution.
  1. Deep OBOL Liquidity
  • Details: Provide ample liquidity so that participants can easily trade in and out of (st)OBOL. This ensures market confidence in the token being able to trade large volumes and sustain swings in price actions without too many negative effects such as slippage.
  • Metrics:
    1. Contract 1 major marketmaker for both onchain (e.g. Arrakis Finance Pro) and offchain liquidity (e.g. Wintermute, GSR, etc.).
    2. Deploy stOBOL as collateral on one major DeFi Protocols (e.g. Morpho)
  • Collective involvement:
    1. Collective proposals to deploy on various DeFi protocols
    2. Obol Association will also pursue a path to ensure minimum liquidity.

D. Optimizing Decentralized Governance

  1. Sustained Delegate Participation
  • Details: Keep the governance cycle efficient and transparent, encouraging thoughtful proposals and voting by providing clear incentives for active delegates (e.g., staking modules, reputation systems, “karma scores”).
  • Metrics:
    1. Enable delegates taking a portion of OBOL staking rewards as payment for their participation in the Collective.
    2. Enable staking rewards only to token holders delegating to “Active Delegates” as defined by a Karma Score or similar.
  • Collective involvement: Managed centrally by Obol Labs/Association with large feedback from the delegates in how to implement the features with the existing staking module
  1. Formalize a Grant Program
  • Details: Directly support SQUAD Goals by establishing a milestones-based Grants Program
  • Success Metrics: 5 grants given out by the Obol Association that support one of the SQUAD goals.
  • Collective involvement:
    1. Setting up the Grants Program: Obol Association
    2. Making Grants Proposals: Obol Collective.

Action Plan:

March 24 – April 16:
Open submission and discussion period. Community members are invited to read SQUAD Goals, provide feedback, and engage in collaborative refinement. The goal is to align around shared priorities and ensure proposals reflect a broad consensus.

April 17 – April 23:
Onchain signaling vote. Delegates will vote on the proposed SQUAD Goals to formally initiate the 2025 goal-setting first cycle.

April 24 onward:
If the result of the voting process is positive, Implementation begins. Upon successful signaling, workstreams aligned with the approved SQUAD Goals will kick off. Coordination and progress tracking will be conducted in public forums, with regular updates provided to ensure transparency and accountability to organize what needs to happen next.

Conclusion:

This proposal outlines the Obol Association’s 2025 SQUAD Goals—a coordinated, measurable, and community-aligned roadmap to advance our shared mission: making Distributed Validators (DVs) the standard for staking. These goals span four strategic pillars: expanding DV adoption, growing the Collective through operators and community, defining the OBOL token’s role in DeFi and governance, and optimizing decentralized coordination.

The Association requests the support of the Collective to move this proposal forward and begin the first SQUAD Goals cycle for 2025. If approved, this will set the stage for collaborative execution and regular iteration throughout the year.

We invite delegates, node operators, partners, and the wider community to provide feedback on these goals. Your insights will help refine our approach, ensuring Obol’s governance remains community-driven and future-ready.

7 Likes
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Thanks for this great outline for the first set of goals, it looks very well thought out to me!
I like the clear structure of four strategic pillars: expanding DV adoption, growing the Collective through operators and community, defining the OBOL token’s role in DeFi and governance, and optimizing decentralized coordination.
Particularly useful is the indication of the Collective involvement, to make clear who is serving which role.
And having measurable Success Metrics is also very valuable as it eliminates any potential wishy-washy arguing later on. This would be the only little remark in terms of potential optimisation, to sharpen the Metrics for part “C. Establishing OBOL Token’s Role in DeFi & Governance” a little more.
But generally, I feel this is a great start and can serve as an example for other communities as well - congrats!

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Thanks for sharing both the proposal and broader context around the Collective’s strategic direction. At kpk, we’re encouraged to see governance moving toward a more goal-oriented and transparent framework. The SQUAD structure feels like a strong foundation for aligning contributors and decision-making over the coming year.

On sections C and D, we’d like to offer a few reflections.

The push to define OBOL’s role in DeFi is timely. Beyond liquidity and integrations, clarifying what kind of asset OBOL is meant to be—and how it fits into the broader staking and governance stack—will be essential to guide adoption. As DeFi-native integrations are explored, we think there’s also value in connecting this to a sustainable resource strategy to ensure that incentives and liquidity programs remain aligned with long-term goals.

Regarding decentralized governance, we fully agree that rewarding participation and increasing transparency are meaningful next steps. Designing these systems with care—so they elevate thoughtful contributions, not just high activity—will be key to building durable legitimacy. The proposed grants and delegate rewards programs are promising tools, especially if paired with clear KPIs and feedback loops tied to the SQUAD goals.

Overall, we’re aligned with the direction outlined here and look forward to contributing to the next phase of Obol governance.

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Preamble

It is important to have the DAO agree on principles and have achievable goals to work towards to prosper results. My thoughts put into writing on this OIP in this post will be mostly critical to make it easier and faster to read, please take no offense if I sound too direct and/or trimmed down. I also checked values with other sources best to my knowledge. I highly value this amazing OIP.

SQUAD

I see SQUAD as a set of guiding principles that help Obol around shared values like strategy and autonomy. However, it’s not well-suited for concrete goal setting.

For defining and tracking actionable goals, a structured framework like SMART SMART criteria - Wikipedia is more effective and clearer.

The vote will be on both segments: principles and goals.

A

A.1

This would be 9,375 % of total Ethereum stake. To achieve this in this calendar year (with only 9 months left) it would be a huge success. In my opinion this goal is not realistic – but this is highly subjective.

A.2

How do you get to 36 % with the referred dashboard?

Is there data on the current progress on this to put the 10 % goal into perspective?

A.3

The missing necessary tech stack here makes this unachievable as well. Building a more flexible tooling (e.g. creating keys after cluster creation is not possible right now) will take time. Furthermore, this goal is highly dependent on new inflows to staking in general which are stagnating right now for several reasons.

B

B.2

I don’t think this is a meaningful measure and the adoption of Obol outlined in A will push this, nonetheless. Is this an action item and not a goal?

C

C.1

Please add what “major CEX” means in terms of trading volume, market penetration, somewhat more tangible than “major”. The current state of this goal is not measurable. Also, the outline in “Details” don’t match the metric, especially “without undermining the protocol or community trust”.

C.2

I’m missing precisely measurable metrics here.

D

D.1

These are action items, not metrics. We could use a metric like “having n delegates active on the form” but this also draws attention to score manipulation. Do AI generated responses add value when delegates just put the whole thread in ChatGPT and paste the response on the forums here? I guess not. But this issue is something that a working group can focus on.

I would love to see delegates getting some of their efforts paid for. Thinking through proposals in detail and working with new ideas is time consuming after all.

I’d suggest removing the action items and putting metrics there:

  • having 10 delegates reviewing each OIP in detail with a pro/con approach and factual arguments

  • get 2 OIPs additionally to OIPs drafted by the Obol Associates per voting cycle

D.2

I believe this goal is an action item to achieve other goals. I suggest removing D.2 completely from this proposal. Grants should be geared toward a goal; they shouldn’t be a goal itself.

Action Plan

This is a bit too vague for my taste, could you elaborate on this in more detail please?

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Thank for for putting up this proposal. We really appreciate the creation of clear, community-aligned goals for 2025. The well-defined roles and responsibilities between the Association and the Collective will undoubtedly help focus our delegate efforts where they are most impactful. We look forward to actively contributing to the next steps of this proposal: collaborating on DV adoption, community growth, DeFi integrations, and decentralized governance. Thank you for providing the structure that empowers us all to build toward Obol’s shared mission.

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Hey @stefa2k .. thanks for going through all the goals… I added some comments here on some feedback you shared!

I agree that defining metrics for delegate activity is important. Instead of broad action items, measurable engagement criteria should be set. A potential approach could be incorporating a structured review framework where active delegates must contribute meaningful feedback that meets predefined quality standards.

For instance, part of the definition of an Active Delegate could include clear criteria for what qualifies as good feedback—ensuring well-reasoned, fact-based, and constructive discussions rather than generic or AI-generated responses.

This means the Association will streamline the process to ensure delivery. Example: For grants, make sure the rules are in place and the process can be executed without disruption. Also, ensuring transparency on progress and execution.

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Hey @zwanzger.eth can you please elaborate more on this? What would you like to explore more on this? It would be great if you can give me an example :slight_smile:

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Thanks for taking the time to review all the goals in details, here are some of my thoughts

SSV currently has a total of 8%, so I think 9% is a high but feasible goals knowing we now have partnerships with Lido, Etherfi, Stakewise, Swell and more to come. In general, research has shown that setting objectives 30% above what is most likely is a good incentive for performance.

This was a rough estimation based on staking providers (Kiln, Everstake, Blockdaemon, etc) and CEX (Binance, Kraken, etc.) I will submit a refined version of this category with a more granular breakdown on how we are seeing the market

It is very early but we will have a couple insto announcements in the coming weeks, we already have a parntership with Quay Cove

We are heavily invested in launchers (Dappnode, Chainnode etc) to make the experience of at Home stakers better. Lots of workshops and communities around the globe trying out DVs. The Pectra upgrade and consolidations will also allow the addition of validators and changing of operators within a cluster. So with 20 new squads and existing 20 that would be around 50k/32/40 = 40 validators per cluster. I agree that this is a bit high and could be revised down to maybe 10k ETH total.

How would you measure success for the bounty program?

Unfortunately, non-disclosure agreement do not allow us to publicly disclose the variable going into these negotiations. But you can check Coingecko for the Top CEXes. Our goal is definitely somewhere the Top 5 there. This is a goal owned by the Association after OIP#2 was passed.

I understand the concern under having clear KPIs and not action items. It is not always that clear cut unfortunately. If the goal is to get people paid for the effort, enabling these system remain a better goal imo than having arbitrary number of comments or OIPs submitted. We want to favor quality over quantity so I definitely agree with you on this one which is one something like a “karma” score can help mitigate some of these issues

Once the goals are passed, it is up to the various stakeholders of the Collective to pick and make proposals on what they see fit to help achieve the goals. This is why we also want to have the grants program live so we have the infra to support external stakeholders. This proposal is not intended to lay out HOW we will achieve all these goals.

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