Written interviews with Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) on the Cardano blockchain.
Link to post on my Medium
This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool operated by Vivid who is working for the NFT project Danketsu and is helping with various tasks, including the stake pool: Danketsu [NINJZ].
The previous guest was a new stake pool operated by IT professionals based in the UK and offering a Patron Program to attract delegators.
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! Thanks for having me. My name is Michael, or better known as Vivid, and I operate the NINJZ stake pool. I’m located in California, have three children, substitute teach part time, and manage the social media and communities of several projects at this point in time.
I have a background in computer programming in my early teens, but after building a family returned to school for psychology. I’m working on graduate school now, and work in the Cardano space full-time.
I was first interested in working in the cryptocurrency industry during COVID lockdowns, like many others. I began as a community member of ADA Ninjaz during the mint in late 2021, and quickly joined the team to help with community management shortly after.
What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become a Stake Pool Operator (SPO)?
Like many others in Cardano, I took the path of Bitcoin → Ethereum → Cardano. In-fact, after spending some time in the Ethereum space, I found the space to be too expensive to operate in for the normal person. For a short time I mined $ETH and sold for $ADA, as I transitioned to the Cardano space.
I always wanted to help with the decentralisation of Cardano, and to be a larger part of it, but without a large pledge, it’s extremely hard to start one by yourself. At the same time, the Danketsu (Formerly ADANinjaZ) community was always asking if we could start one up, and stated they were willing to delegate to the pool if we built one. Having a background in computer programming early in my life, and having some experience with Linux during that time, I thought I would give it a try.
What’s your involvement with the Danketsu NFT project? And what are the advantages of staking to [NINJZ]?
I began working for Danketsu in early 2021 to help manage the community, and moderate the discord. I quickly took on more responsibilities through 2022, as I helped with marketing, setup and transported everything needed for cNFTCon, and helped with key aspects of the project. In 2023, I helped with token allocation, set up liquidity and farming pools for the token, and set up the vending machine for the stake pool.
The advantages to staking to NINJZ pool are: minimum fees (currently 340 minPoolFee 0% Margin), a monthly raffle of both fungible and non-fungible tokens, delegator only giveaways, and earn $NINJAZ each epoch by delegating to the pool.
Can you explain what is the recent SPO Poll on the k and minPoolCost parameters? How have you voted and why?
The recent SPO poll was regarding the minPoolFee and K parameters. These parameters are currently set at minPoolFee = 340₳ and K = 500.
This essentially means the pool is required to take 340A from the first block minted from each epoch. If the pool only mints 1 block an epoch, 1m₳-1.5m₳ in delegation, then a large portion of the rewards are going to the pool versus the delegators.
In regards to K, this parameter determines how many fully saturated pools can exist at once, currently 500. Adjusting this parameter to 1,000 means lowering the max saturation point of 71.6m₳ to allow more fully saturated pools in hopes of increasing decentralisation across the network.
NINJZ pool voted for a minPoolFee = 170 and K = 1,000.
Great contribution. Any closing words? Where can people stay in touch?
Thanks for having us! You can reach out with Twitter, Discord, and email at any time.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.