Cardano completed one year of mainnet launch on 29th July 2021 and so do PSP on 30th July 2021. We have successfully completed running our stake pool for one year. We are thankful to the SPO's, who helped and guided us in running our pool uninterruptedly. We are also thankful to the delegators, who trusted us in staking with our pool and has given us the opportunity to learn and perform our best during the first year of stake pool operation. In this one year span of time we have not achieved much and not been able to go ahead with our vision due to lack of delegation support into our pool but learned a lot with stake pool operations.
We didn't participate in the incentivized testnet due to lack of time before the mainnet launch. Later we realised how important it is to take part in testnet to draw delegators attention towards our pool. It would have been good marketing opportunity for us, but we missed it. However in June 2020 i.e. almost two months before the mainnet launch we did participate in the testnet, but not the incentivized one, to get us familiarised with the node operations.
We launched our pool with just 1K pledge. At the start we had only one relay node in India. Later on we realised that for better connectivity and to reduce downtime during pool maintenance we need one more relay node. So we launched another relay node at Frankfurt. Since then our pool is running on three servers on cloud VPS. One block producing Core node. Two Relay nodes. Present server specifications are more than what we had before. We also decided to add more relays in different geographical locations to improve connectivity and availability in future.
Pool parameters:
Pledge 4.95k₳
Fixed Costs 340₳
Margin 1%
Sever Details (past): Server Details (present):
OS: Ubuntu 20.04 (LTS) x64 OS: Ubuntu 20.04 (LTS) x64
CPU: 2vCPUs CPU: 4vCPUs
Memory: 4GB Memory: 8GB
SSD Disk: 80GB SSD Disk: 160GB
Bandwidth: 4TB Bandwidth: 5TB
Due to financial constraints we were not able to pledge much. As min pledge is still not mentioned by IOHK, so we started our pool with just 1K pledge. Pools with higher pledge has slight edge over the others in selection as slot leader in block minting. The rewards mechanism and formula is yet to be revised. We will make our pool prime with dedication and hard work to win over delegators confidence in our pool. We want to prove that performance plays major role in running a stake pool successfully. We want to build up delegators confidence in our pool by being transparent with our mission and vision. We will definitely increase the pool pledge from our side after staking Ethereum with rocketpool. The rewards from Ethereum staking will be added as pool pledge. Pool owners rewards also gets pledged as usual. Initially with the mainnet launch we had good number of delegators with active stake reaching as high as 2.66 M ₳ in epoch 213. We were suppose to mint one block in that epoch as per 'adapools.org' but not allotted any slot in that epoch as decentralization factor d was high i.e. around 0.8 or 20% decentralized. During that time most blocks were minted by IOHK. The active stake got reduced to 135.10k ₳ in epoch 214 and further got reduced to 107.44k ₳ in epoch 218. Till epoch 227 active stake was 107.44k ₳ and we didn't mint any block. In epoch 228 we were lucky to mint our first mainnet block with active stake of 532.11k ₳ and decentralization parameter d = 0.48. The Cardano node was 52% decentralized at that time. The active stake didn't hold for long time and so we
had to again wait for the active stake to get increased. In epoch 245 pool active stake got increased to 1.45M ₳ from 28.46k ₳ due to a single delegator. The active stake held for one month and we were able to perform to our maximum. We are very much thankful to this special delegator. But unfortunately this special delegator withdrawn max of his/her fund but still staking with our pool. We are still hoping that he/she will again come back with M ₳ to stake with our pool. We keep track of the slots allotted to us in each epoch just one day before the next epoch by running scripts like slot leader logs. We never miss a block and never take chances with delegators stake. We maintain high ROA comparable with other pools. Also we monitor our servers 24/7 to prevent any downtime.
So after epoch 251 this is the performance result of our pool.
Our pool minted blocks till epoch 253 i.e. till active stake held. Total we have minted 21 blocks till date. As promised the pool owner's rewards gets pledged. So after epoch 253 we pledged the total rewards earned so far. We are yet to build delegators confidence in our pool. By pledging rewards we want to prove ourselves in building trust. We will continue to do so till we are able to pledge 25K ada. Target pledge is 100K ada. Then only we will withdraw funds to pay for our server running costs and move ahead with our vision in giving back to the society for the welfare of the lesser privileged. We want to make people believe and have faith in PSP tagline i.e. "The future is here. Together, we can change the world for the better. We have committed not to run more than one stake pool in future and thus contributing towards decentralizing Cardano. To all the successful pool operators it is our humble request to you, please don't run more than one stake pool and give other small pool operators ample opportunity to grow and prosper. Remember together we can decentralize Cardano and reach great heights by creating ample opportunity for others and make world a better place to live in. To the delegators, who are having 1.5 M ₳ or more we request you to rotate your delegation and support small pools to grow. Right now around 1.5 M ₳ is required to mint blocks in every epoch and help decentralize Cardano.
It is expensive to run stake pool on cloud server but at the same time it is also advantageous to delegators to earn max rewards as there is guarantee of 99.99% uptime.
Since we are not earning running our pool on cloud server now and the current system requirements to run pool has increased, so we are planning to run our pool in-house on renewable energy. We will use solar energy as our primary power source to meet our power requirements to run the Cardano stake pool. So we have to set up proper infrastructure to run our stake pool 24/7. Proper power backup system along with reliable high speed internet is essential so that we can guarantee our delegators 99.9% uptime.
In regard to the parameters a0, d, k:
a0 - pledge factor: Right now no minimum pool pledge is fixed by the IOHK. IOHK is discussing and modeling options to make pledge more effective at addressing pool splitting for lower pledge levels. The current structure of the rewards formula does not give them the flexibility to tweak the impact by a simple parameter change; they will need to modify the rewards formula, which is something their research team has been working on for some time.
d - decentralization factor: The parameter d became zero in epoch 257 on 31/03/21. That means the Cardano node is now fully decentralized. This is when all blocks will be minted by SPO's and Cardano's future lies in the SPO's hand.
k - saturation factor: As parameter K has been changed to K =500 from K=150 in December, at Epoch 234, the max saturation level has been lowered to 64M ₳.
Parameter K will soon be changed again to 1000 so that delegation happens to more pools, thus creating opportunity for more pools to create blocks. Hence creating the most decentralized and economically sustainable ecosystem of stake pools. To know more about parameter d, k and a0 you can read the IOHK blog here.
We still have neither received delegation support from IOHK nor from Cardano Foundation CF. We are trying our best to promote our pool to get selected in the next round of delegation support for three months. If our pool gets selected by IOHK then we will receive delegation support of 3,25M ₳. During this time we have to promote your pool and try our best to attract as many delegators as we can to delegate their stake in our pool. If we are able to increase the active stake of our pool by 1.5M ₳ through promotion then even after three months when IOHK withdraw its delegation support, our pool still will be able to mint blocks continuously with 1.5 M ₳ active stake. Right now min 1.5 M ₳ active stake is required to mint blocks in every epoch. We are desperately waiting for all these to happen and it will take our pool to the next level. Till then keep the faith with us.
Till now we have not shared much about our personal side as we are not confident with our government in related to crypto and its regulation in India. We will definitely share our personal side with all when things are all in order and we have trust and confident in our government.
As always we will continue making quality contents in Blockchain Technology, Cardano and Ethereum. Also continue helping others in understanding the basics and become self motivated in taking the next leap forward with the blockchain technology.
Due to lack of funds we were not able to help people those in need especially during the recent tragic second wave of Corona virus outbreak in India in May-June 2021, which took many lives. The true spirit of decentralization is in helping others. Cardano has provided a platform and even made it simpler to help others simply by delegating your stake. You can make big impact on others life simply by delegating your stake. We are looking forward to your support during this second year of our stake pool operation. Support us to transform our vision into action. Together we can make the world a better place to live in with equal opportunities.
Added pool milestones page on our website to keep you update with the latest milestones that we cross as we move ahead with our stake pool operation. You can visit our pool milestones here.
Support us. Let's grow together. See you in the pool.