How Rocket Pool Works
Unlike solo stakers, who are required to put 32 ETH up for deposit to create a new validator, Rocket Pool nodes only need to deposit 16 ETH per validator. This will be coupled with 16 ETH from the staking pool (which stakers deposited in exchange for rETH) to create a new Ethereum validator. This new validator is called a minipool.
To the Beacon chain, a minipool looks exactly the same as a normal validator. It has the same responsibilities, same rules it must follow, same rewards, and so on. The only difference is in how the minipool was created and how withdrawals work when the node operator decides to voluntarily exit the minipool or gets slashed. All of the creation, withdrawing, and rewards delegation is handled by Rocket Pool's smart contracts on the Execution layer. This makes it completely decentralized.
