Introducing... Castle Cardano [CASTE]

Staking & Delegation Pool Introductions
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Hello Cardano Community!

We are Castle Cardano - two brothers located in NYC and Montana, USA who have been excited about Cardano since 2017. We launched our pool right when Shelley went live because we couldn’t wait to be a part of this incredible vision that we know will one day revolutionize the world. This is not just a side project for us but a passion and we will provide a reliable, secure, and well maintained pool for any delegators that choose to join us on this journey.

One of our goals is to be an advocate for Cardano by simplifying the intimidating and confusing blockchain/crypto terminology to help newcomers with limited exposure to understand the technical benefits and social good of Cardano. We have applied our 10+ years of enterprise level experience in IT, networking, and cyber security towards learning and understanding the technical and societal aspects of blockchain and Cardano technology so we may help spread adoption. We believe our low fee Stake Pool can be the platform that helps us advance this messaging. We’ve started by easy to follow blog posts on staking - check them out in the Resources section of our website!

Pool Info

  • Ticker: CASTE
  • Pool ID: f1e470e5967d43d257e8128b82928ab45e607fdceca826c0020f4b27
  • Pledge: 180k
  • Fixed Fee: 340
  • Variable Fee: 1.8%

Website
https://castlecardano.com/

Contact
Email us at support@castlecardano.com
Follow us on twitter: @CastleCardano

Location
NYC / Montana, USA

Pool Infrastructure
Our pool is linux based and hosted in AWS with one core node and two relay nodes. All security groups are tightly locked down with the only method of access through an equally secured jump host. 24/7 monitoring is enabled with active alerting to ensure uptime and stability. All nodes have 4GB RAM and 5 Gbps bandwidth. Our website is hosted on different infrastructure to reduce the attack surface of our pool and minimize risk. Pool key management is also taken seriously and we follow industry best practices to ensure our pool and your ADA are safe.

Pool Redundancy
We have 2 relays in AWS hosted in different availability zones for redundancy.

Operator Experience
Co-operators have a total of 10+ years in enterprise level IT, networking and cyber security. We have applied industry best standards used at fortune 500 companies world wide to secure our pool and make sure it’s running as smoothly as possible. We stay active in the Cardano community to stay up to date on upgrades and any new changes that may be coming.

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Honest question: Why do you charge a variable fee? A pool has fixed, but no variable (as function of the delegated stake) cost. I know that many pools charge a few percent margin in addition to the fixed fee and I’m seriously beginning to wonder if I have missed an important consideration. My understanding is that the fixed fee is supposed to cover the pool operating cost already. What am I missing?

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It does depend on how many blocks your pool produces but until the price of ADA goes up 340 ADA is not that much if are a small pool producing very few blocks. Also, depending on how the stake pool operators choose to architect their pool, their costs may be higher than others. The variable fee can be used to act as that buffer but also acts as an incentive to pool operators for them to consistently spend the time it takes to manage the pool.

Now you could just raise the fixed fee more than 340 but it doesn’t really make sense to change pool parameters every time the price of ADA goes up or down. The variable fee helps ensure you are covered during price fluctuations.