David Rugendyke is the founder and CTO of Rocket Pool, a decentralized Ethereum staking protocol. He launched Rocket Pool in 2017 to make Ethereum staking more accessible and decentralized. With a background in computer science and software development, Rugendyke built Rocket Pool to allow users to stake as little as 0.01 ETH and introduced a system where node operators only need 16 ETH to run a validator, using pooled funds. Rocket Pool officially launched on mainnet in 2021.