I’m lightly playing around with the idea of starting a pool, but I’m afraid that I’m a bit late to creating one within the testnet.
From what I’ve gathered, they plan on officially accepting pools/operators from those who participated in the testnet, but what about those who wish to join after the release of Shelley? I’m guessing there will still be unofficial pools, but I haven’t seen anything in regards to how this will be handled.
I appreciate you all for taking a moment to read my post and any information you can provide.
So anyone can create a stakepool on main net and register it through the Cardano Foundation. No pools are ‘official’ they are all run by the community. Although IOHK do run pools too.
So what I think you are referring to here is the process in which we move over to the main net. IOHK will invite people currently running stakepools on the testnet to set their pools up in the Haskell testnet first. This is because they know these people can run successful and stable pools, which is required to run the network and be decentralised. However that doesn’t mean other people can’t set pools up, you just need to wait for that to be available.
As far as I’m aware, the plan is to run the Haskell testnet for a short time in two phases.
A time for pool operators set up their stakepools. Start by inviting a select few, then adding more before opening it up to every operator.
Then allowing ada holders to balance check their rewards. (As far as I know, you will not earn rewards on haskell testnet, the testnet is simply an exercise to allow pool operators to set a pool up using the haskell code and ada holders to check their rewards will be available to them).
Once this is complete a final date will be decided to move over to main net. I do not know if the process with pool operators will happen again, to prevent a mass influx of pools that are not run properly. Or if they will just allow all pools to go online straight away.
So to answer your question, yes if you want to run a pool you can. Your pool will not be anymore unofficial to other pools. It’s up to you to run your pool, maintain it and market it. Running a pool is a small business.
@Lgbeano thanks for the detailed reply. Very helpful.
Out of curiosity, would you happen to know of anyone looking to partner up in creating a stake pool? I’d like to do it right, but it’s a lot of work with the marketing, communication, development and maintenance.
I’d imagine this is a good place to start, but maybe there are other places to let my interest be known?
Well for one thing you need to say what you can do and what you’d need the other(s) to do. And you can add uncertainty of returns to the list of issues. Good luck!
Of course! I was planning on making another post about my intent and my background, but this is a good place to start.
I’m a full stack software developer with extensive knowledge of AWS, which I was planning on using to run the stake pool. At least initially. I also have 4+ years experience running my own businesses, so I’m familiar with marketing/customer relations side of things and although I’ve done a one-man show before in the past, it’s not something I’d willingly put myself through again.