Introducing DAWN Pool [DAWN]: Long-Term Investor Community

Staking & Delegation Pool Introductions
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Hello there! My name is Shane Coughlan and I have been involved in open source governance, internal process development, supply chain management and community building for about 20 years. A lot of my time has been spent in the enterprise, embedded, mobile and automotive industries. I am currently with the Linux Foundation running the OpenChain Project and - when not working - I’m a long term investor across multiple asset classes. I founded DAWN as a community for long-term investment in Cardano, seeing this as a mixture of value and growth investing, not speculation.

DAWN is currently hosted in a location powered by solar and solar battery. The solar is a high efficiency system from Panasonic providing 5.6kw (5kw average). The battery is a 5.6kw/h system from Panasonic. The primary server consumes 300~400w on average. This is a zero-emission pool.

  1. Primary Server is CentOS 8.3
  2. Ryzen 3900X
  3. 64 GB Ram
  4. 2 TB PCIe 4 SSD
  5. VMs hosted on 64 TB Raid-Z2
  6. Fiber network @ 2 GB/s

This machine hosts the Relay node and the Block node as KVM virtual machines.

  1. Both nodes run Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with 6 Virtual Cores
  2. Each machine has 12 GB Ram
  3. Each machine has a 200 GB QCOW2 virtual disk
  4. The machines have the usual hardening: limited ports, firewall, disabled root access via SSH and non-essential services removed.

The cold node (private keys) are kept on a VM with the same basic specification as above plus:

  1. It is on an encrypted cold machine in another secure location.
  2. The node has no network access regardless of being isolated (Ubuntu 20.04 disabled plus VM networking bridge disabled).
  3. The node has no discovery on bluetooth, wireless etc.
  4. The node is backed up to a 480 GB SSD, also encrypted, and kept in another location.

DAWN is part of the Single Pool Alliance and the Cardano SPO’s Japanese Guild (非公式). It is focused on transparency and has four key principles:

  1. Clarity of governance. DAWN is managed by a clearly identified professional with a long career in technology, governance and community building. We are committed to great investor outcomes inside the pool and in the broader ecosystem. Delegates are stakeholders and guide strategy. Communication on roadmaps, decisions and actions are released on a weekly basis. DAWN seeks to provide stability and sustainability, two of the most important tools an investor has.
  2. Clarity of purpose. DAWN has been built to bring together people investing in Cardano for the long-term, with a focus on the ~4.64% rewards available in the ecosystem, and a secondary interest in the appreciation of the token value over time. The specific model is a mixture of value and growth investing, not speculation.
  3. Clarity of approach. DAWN is operated without mystery or surprises. Strategy and actions? Justified. Infrastructure? Explained. Location? Described. Power and fallback? Specifics. Intent to institute security audits? Explicit.
  4. Community, community, community. Cryptocurrencies remain a difficult model for many people who could benefit from being involved. We are in a unique space where the intermediaries found in more traditional trading are unnecessary. This is an opportunity for a new experience in a familiar investment workflow.