Hi all,
I’m Marc, the founder of the LetzBake! staking service, which operates the BAKE1 stake pool since the beginning of the ITN days in December 2019. LetzBake! stands for reliability, security and transparency, which are not just words, but our living culture. I was really impressed by the success of BAKE1 on the ITN during which we minted more than 6k blocks and earned more than 5m ADA for our delegators, all of which were transferred in full, as we did not take any fees. I want again thank all our delegators who lifted us from the underdog that we were to one of the most successful pools on the ITN. BAKE1 is now open for delegation on the Shelley mainnet and we are looking forward to continue our service for our delegators and secure the chain.
I’m a professional epidemiologist at PhD level with working experience in several African and Asian countries in which I’m implementing research and health development projects. I’m currently working at FAIRMED, an international health NGO that supports developing countries to improve their health systems so that all people living in these countries have equitable access to health services of better quality, but especially the marginalized and left behind populations. At FAIRMED, I’m the program manager for Nepal and Sri Lanka, managing all projects we run in these countries. LetzBake! is my side project, but I’m dedicating most of my free time to it and are currently balancing the time I have between my main job, LetzBake!, and my family (I’m married and the father of a 5-years old boy).
Having this background and access to ministries of health in Africa and Asia, my plan for my contribution to Cardano is to help the project gaining adoption from outside the crypto scene. I, therefore, pledge to use 10% of the rewards earned by BAKE1 to carry out this plan. There are several options I can conceive of on how to use the funds, but my favorite currently is to use these in the micro-financing components we have in Nepal to financially support people with disabilities so that they can earn an income and be part of the economy. With Nepal being currently more or less hostile towards cryptocurrencies, I cannot initially introduce Cardano directly, but have to convert the rewards of BAKE1 into the Nepali Rupee to be used in micro-finance, and then lobby with the government over time to reconsider their current stance. By delegating to BAKE1 you will help me in carrying out this plan and directly support this cause.
Over the past years of being active in the crypto scene, we have invested heavily, both financially and time, to strengthen our infrastructure and make our network resilient to downtime. Both our BAKE1 validator and backup validator each run on a dedicated Intel Xeon Hexa-Core server with 64 GB DDR4 ECC RAM, and two 1 TB NVMe SSDs (mirrored) in Tier IV, DIN ISO/IEC 27001 certified data centers in Europe with redundant UPS, climate control, fire protection, 24/7 monitoring and DDoS protection. We also run four relay nodes in separate data centers in Europe that shield the validators from the Internet. While three of these relays are public and published on chain, we run a fourth relay that is only shared in a private peering agreement with ISPPA operators, of which LetzBake! is a member. Generally, all connections between our servers are encrypted and only established via our private overlay network across data centers. In order to prevent downtime, we also implement rigorous metrics and log monitoring and alerting so that we are made aware of problems in the system before they become serious. I believe with this setup we will be among the most reliable and secure staking pools in Cardano.
I’m looking forward to welcome you at BAKE1!
Cheers,
Marc (cryptodad, founder of LetzBake!)
Pool information
Ticker: BAKE1
ID: 849e1f8a602ce6de1827577a7c0f174e564f58581900ddcf47d3ccc7
Pledge: 15k Ada
Fixed fee: 340 Ada
Var. fee: 1%
Website: https://letzbake.com
Telegram: https://t.me/letzbake
Twitter: @LetzBake1
Email: hello@letzbake.com
Location: Switzerland
