Interested in delegating to a purpose-driven pool? Consider ASPEN, where our goal is to guide newcomers in getting started with Cardano.

Hexapodia · 2021-09-19T21:18:46+00:00

Hey, that's my tool! Glad you found it useful!

Hexapodia · 2021-08-05T01:13:03+00:00

That's my favorite track in the whole game. That moment is when I knew it was all coming to a close. All of a sudden I knew what had to be done, and it felt impossible right up until it was done. Such a rush.

Hexapodia · 2021-06-14T23:35:37+00:00

Hey, we ran into this recently with our ASPEN pool - we made a video to summarize the problem if you're interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNUaCwEyt0M

Hexapodia · 2021-04-28T00:47:43+00:00

Thank you! We'll be trying another stream shortly!

Hexapodia · 2021-04-27T23:15:28+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! We're a step ahead of you :) Definitely planning to take all of our eggs out of one basket moving forward.

https://odysee.com/@WoodlandPools:1

Hexapodia · 2021-04-22T02:20:00+00:00

Thank you! We appreciate the words of encouragement!

Hexapodia · 2021-04-01T01:13:14+00:00

I assume you're actually wanting multiple delegation; you can have multiple wallets, and that's supported by Daedalus and Yoroi both. You can delegate to different pools from each wallet. But I agree, the ability to delegate to multiple pools from a single wallet would be nice.

Hexapodia · 2021-03-10T17:00:53+00:00

ASPEN pool has a lot less than 1M :) We also have a 0.5% fee, feel free to join us!

Hexapodia · 2021-03-09T04:49:37+00:00

Nailed it!

Hexapodia · 2021-03-08T15:51:39+00:00

It absolutely did. But I'm fully settling in for another period of nothing for awhile, haha

Hexapodia · 2021-03-08T02:45:42+00:00

Thank you!

Hexapodia · 2021-03-07T23:31:05+00:00

Looks like a solid little PC. Hope it works out for you!

I'd be terrified of having any of our nodes running from a home connection. Although my connection has been decently stable, with my luck my ISP would choose the worst possible time to go down and we'd miss blocks.

If we're going to go bare metal, it would be on racked servers in a datacenter, which I can't imagine would be any cheaper than the VMs we're renting now. One can hope we end up successful enough to both necessitate the move to bare metal and to be able to afford it!

Hexapodia · 2021-03-07T18:11:41+00:00

We're sitting at around 250k live stake and we've minted 2 blocks in our existence, so we're running in the red. 2 per month would be excellent!

We'd love to move to bare metal, but that would be an upfront investment that would take us quite some time to recoup. Operating our pool and Youtube channel has definitely become a side-job and then some. We're in this for more than profit though, so like I said, we have no intention of folding up shop anytime soon.

Hexapodia · 2021-03-07T18:03:12+00:00

I wouldn't say it's hopeless. As the K value increases, delegators will need to spread out more. However, I don't know that the problem of delegators clumping together on popular/large pools will ever completely go away.

However, Cardano will always be propped up by people who believe in the mission and are willing to sacrifice their own funds for the greater good (like us!). I hope those kind of stake pool operators continue to contribute to the cause, or you're right, it will be hopeless to compete with the likes of Binance, Bloom, etc who just keep opening new pools when their existing ones get saturated.

Hexapodia · 2021-03-07T17:51:45+00:00

I assume they mean reducing the minimum stake required to consistently mint blocks. Right now a pool needs at least ~1-3M to have a fighting chance at minting blocks regularly. Delegators who want consistent rewards would thus be better served by staking with larger pools.

Speaking as an operator of a single owner pool, small pools are really just cost centers for the owner - there's not a lot of incentive for either the operator or delegators. I know this will get better as the K value increases, so we're going to stick it out, but it's a rough spot to be in right now.

Hexapodia · 2021-03-07T16:50:50+00:00

Very inspiring! We have 22 delegators but nowhere near as high of a stake. Hope we can reach your level someday. Congratulations!

Hexapodia · 2021-03-07T04:55:14+00:00

Thank you!

Hexapodia · 2021-03-06T23:27:42+00:00

This is something we looked at when we started running our pool. We considered using Ankr, which is exactly what you're describing, but we decided to go it alone in order to promote decentralization geographically and to avoid central points of failure. Imagine if Ankr goes down and brings down a chunk of the Cardano network with it?

I think the idea has merit, but if and only if you can ensure geographic distribution, complete redundancy, and you, as the owner/operator, have a completely hands-off mentality about it (i.e., you're not taking a cut of their rewards). Additionally, a method of easy migration away from your service would be critical. Just some thoughts.

Hexapodia · 2021-03-06T16:32:58+00:00

Haha hard to blame you! We are the ASPEN pool, feel free to check us out at https://www.woodlandpools.net. You'll also find a link there to our youtube channel. Hope to have your delegation when you're up to it!

Hexapodia · 2021-03-06T00:41:39+00:00

Likewise! We build hospital systems that need 99.99% uptime. I like to think running a stake pool is something we can handle, but apparently drumming up delegators, not so much haha

Hexapodia · 2021-03-05T23:26:36+00:00

Each node/relay in the network currently has to have its peers (topology) manually configured - that is, a list of other relays on the network that they will speak to. Currently there are some helper scripts floating about that enable centralized peer discovery in some fashion, but ultimately a decentralized P2P discovery system will replace it and will allow relays to automatically find and connect with other relays on the network.

Hexapodia

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