To read the current draft you should download the file spec-update-draft.html from the relevant branch, and then open the local file in a browser. This procedure will be simplified in the near future.
This branch contains the latest agreed draft.
The staging branch is used to collect pull requests approved for merge, to enable review before merging the changes to the main branch.
All Pull Requests proposing changes should be made against the staging branch.
There is also an advanced-staging branch, which shows most proposed PRs merged. That may be useful to look at when considering a new Pull Request,
to avoid duplicating work or being surprised by a conflicting change proposal.
The Validator Operations Standard (ValOS) describes risks that Node Operators face, and mitigation and control strategies, how to assess whether the risks are adequately managed.
ValOS is the next stage evolution of the D.U.C.K Knowledge Base, bringing the core content together in a specification that is updated and maintained through a transparent process to make it easier to understand what needs to be done and how to test whether it is, with a less flippant name.
The primary objective is to bootstrap and facilitate community engagement with information about node operator excellence.
We encourage the community to use, review, and contribute to the content.
By disseminating and providing easy access to this knowledge, we empower the node operator community to increase robustness. ValOS enables all operators to engage with a wealth of information, experiences, and methodologies that they can adapt and customize to their own specific service model.
Ethereum’s staking ecosystem is powered by the ever-expanding set of node operators. Each operator, with its unique operational methodology, contributes to the protocol’s strength and resilience. This diversity of processes, tools, systems, and geographies within the group of operators should be further nurtured and promoted.
With expected growth in the operator set, each with different team structures and sizes, global footprints, and operational complexities, collaborative and cooperative mechanisms should be devised. They should enable operators to effectively grasp crucial insights on risk management and mitigation, and to understand what an auditor will be checking for when they are assessing a Node Operator against the ValOS framework.
ValOS is being revised over the course of 2025 with a new version expected before the end of the year.
Proposed updates are accepted (or returned for more work) on a weekly basis. The spec-update-draft.md in the main branch shows the draft specification with all the changes that have been accepted so far.
You can also see the specification as it would appear if currently proposed changes are accepted, by looking in the advance-staging branch for spec-update-draft.html (currently, to view it as intended you need to clone the branch or download the HTML file, and open the local file in a browser. We expect to make it possible to see this online very soon.)
You can provide any feedback or comments by raising or commenting on issues or pull requests in this github repository, or through a google form. Please read the contributor guidelines to understand the expectations and (lightweight) conditions before making your first contribution.
You can also join our Telegram group. As well as being a place to provide feedback, we highlight issues currently under discussion there, to help participants understand what we are working on at any given time.