Written interviews with Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) on the Cardano blockchain.
Link to post on my Medium
This week’s Cardano SPO is Robin from Germany who works as a freelancer alongside his involvement in the Cardano ecosystem: LACE Pool [LACE].
The previous guest was Bastian, who’s a Berlin-based finance and economics professional with a passion for blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies and decentralisation.
This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.
Hi, thanks for your time. Tell us something about yourself, where are you based and what is your background?
Hi Patryk, first of all thank you very much for inviting me to this interview.
My name is Robin, I’m from beautiful Hamburg in Germany and have been living in Berlin for about 10 years now with my wife Claudia and our two sons.
I have always been self employed since the beginning of my career. After a period of freelancing, I co-founded a web hosting company in 2007 and then a software agency in 2012. Today I am freelancing again.
What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become a Stake Pool Operator (SPO)?
I first came across Bitcoin in 2014, but I didn’t realize the potential at the time. In late 2017, I started investing in Ethereum as I saw more potential in it. In 2018, my research finally led me to Cardano and it clicked immediately.
At first, it was just pure speculation for me and I didn’t even think I would ever work with Cardano myself. That changed when I later found more time to explore the platform. My technical knowledge was a good fit to open a stake pool and thus contribute to the decentralization of the network.
I met a lot of great people and became part of the Cardano community.
You’ve created the Open Source Software Fund, what is it? And why is being open source so important? How does Cardano fit in?
I’ve been working with open source software for decades, not only by using them but also by contributing to projects. The maintainers of open source projects are mostly volunteers. It often becomes a second but unpaid job for them. On top of that they have to deal with lazy and rude people. Many step down after some time, frustrated or even burnt out.
With the Open Source Software Fund I want to support at least some of these people financially so they can keep up their great work. 25% of my pool revenue is dedicated to the fund.
Open source has benefits proprietary software can not provide. It’ll be too much to list them all. What I believe is most significant in the context of Cardano’s development is:
- security: popular open source projects have many followers reviewing/verifying the code, thus finding and fixing bugs is usually a faster process.
- transparency: how active is a project (how many people work on it, and how often)
- innovation: allowing people to use your code or get inspired accelerates new development
Looking back at 2022, what developments/events did you find most exciting in the Cardano ecosystem? And what are you looking forward to in 2023?
I find it very hard to remember what actually happened during that year because so much is happening all the time.
Having said that, I think the birth of many dApps in the ecosystem and witnessing the beginning of Cardano’s DeFi space was probably most exciting for me. Also seeing the Vasil chain upgrade scaling the platform quite a lot was a great achievement of 2022. As for me, I began working for Axo.
For 2023 I am looking forward to seeing more innovation in the entire Cardano space and new platform launches like Midnight, Hydra, Lace wallet, and of course Axo.
Great contribution. Any final words? Where can people stay in touch?
Thank you very much for your time and your great questions!
You can best reach me on Twitter. I am always happy to chat!
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.