Introduction JUNO stake pool. Delegators We Need You!

Background history

Since early 2017 I have been fascinated by the Cardano project after reading the initial published whitepaper. Since then I have supported the Cardano project and ecosystem, being part of ITN and HTN.

Having a background in Ethereum I had to convince my team of developers about Cardano which was not an easy task to do. For obvious reasons you probably heard from many Ethereum maxis. Once Mainnet was live I had them convinced and our software developers started with acquiring knowledge and with development activities to contribute and expand the Cardano ecosystem.

Unfortunately JUNO stake pool never did reach the level of support other stake pools got from the community although we belonged to the first 50 stake pools that were live on Mainnet.

Looking back I cannot find a clear answer for this since we put a lot of effort in our work not only technically but also to promote the stake pool.

JUNOs stake at the peak was 10.2 million ADA and ever since our stake did go downhill to currently about 4 million ADA.

Question is why this happened?

Was my stake pool not operated efficient, did it have downtime? The answer is No.

Is my stake pool not producing blocks? The answer is No.

  • Since it start when it reached a certain level of stake it has been steadily producing blocks.

Is my stake pool producing blocks below average? The answer is No.

  • Only due to the limited amount of stake there are large fluctuations in block assignments per epoch, this is something that is out of a stake pool operators control. But on average it generates ~5% return on ADA per annum.

Does my stake pool have high fees? The answer is No. (1.45%)

Didn’t I advertise my stake pool? The answer is No. (but maybe not in the right channels and not constantly since my team and I are concentrating on developments)

Didn’t I support my delegators? The answer is No.

  • I am constantly available through my Telegram group to answer questions.

  • Next to that I helped many other stake pool operators with my knowledge about the Cardano ecosystem and still do.

Is my stake pool not enough decentralized? The answer is No.

  • My stake pool nodes are spread over 3 datacenters in 2 different countries

Is my stake pool running on cheap hardware? The answer is No.

  • JUNO servers are bare metal servers with 64Gb Memory Hexacore AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with 1TB NVMe SSD storage.

  • JUNO infrastructure consist of a block producer, a standby copy for the block producer and three relay nodes

  • JUNO test infrastructure, two VPS servers (block producer and relay node) for testing purposes of new functionality

Compared to other stake pools JUNO stake pool is very professionally equipped.

Other hardware maintained by us:

Am I as a stake pool operator not visible or hiding in a grey area? The answer is No.

Didn’t I produce materials or blogs that is helping others to understand the Cardano ecosystem? The answer is No.

  • Look at our guides at junostakepool.com, delegationtracker.com/blog

  • One of my many tasks at Artano is onboarding and teaching new people to the crypto space about Cardano. For example: How to securely install a wallet, how to buy crypto, how to transfer it to their wallet and how to stake with a stake pool of choice.

Didn’t I contribute to the Cardano ecosystem? The answer is No.

  • We did develop the delegation tracker solution for the community paid from our pool rewards. All our pool rewards are used for maintaining the infrastructure and for development of the Cardano ecosystem. This product is still in development by us and we have many more features planned for it. Not many stake pool operators are putting their stake pool rewards where their mouth is, the majority of them are using it for their personal gains.

  • I managed to get our development team in the Plutus Partner Dev Program and as such we are contributing to the whole community by building a AgeUSD stable coin and NFT marketplace reference implementation that will be available as open source. Looking back I am very proud of my teams achievements and making the switch to Cardano after initial hesitation. IOHK seems very happy and satisfied with our progress and deliveries so far that they extended working with us together. Currently we are testing our Plutus smart contract reference implementations on Alonzo white to make sure they are working smoothly once Goguen is delivered on the Mainnet.

  • Through project Catalyst and discord I got in early contact with Matt that envisioned Artano a community driven NFT marketplace. We teamed up with him and as such I am a co-founder of Artano and our developers are building the Artano NFT marketplace. We raised a company, managed to get a crypto bank account and putting all our efforts in this project to make it successful. (This project is non-funded, this is where the majority of our stake pool rewards go.) Our dev team is already tirelessly working for over 3 months on the development of the building blocks of the Artano NFT marketplace. We would appreciate your support by voting for us at Artano Ideascale Fund 5)

  • Further we were awarded with funding for our idea Dapp for Business Contracts through Project Catalyst for which we are the community very thankful. We are also developing this solution and positioning it in the market.

Summary

To be short as a stake pool owner and very early adopter my team and I put the majority of our time in the Cardano ecosystem, we are working on a daily basis developing for Cardano to make this ecosystem grow and reach mass adoption. We do this with passion and pleasure and we know many other teams are doing this as well, but not many of them are doing this on a fulltime basis and putting their stake pool rewards in the development of the ecosystem.

Chilling Cardano on Youtube or Twitter

Yes I am sorry I am not doing this, I am not chilling Cardano regarding price on Youtube or Twitter. I think this has no intrinsic value as such and it is really surprises me the amount of support these so called social influencers are getting without any real contribution. The real value of Cardano is created by individual developers or software companies that are putting all their efforts in developing solutions on Cardano. The price of ADA will follow if we are able to create mass adoption via these solutions.

Ideas or feedback
In case you have ideas for me how I can attract more stake for my stake pool that is funding our developments please let me know. I am open to input that could help me.

Invitation to support us

As such I would invite you all to stake with JUNO stake pool and support a passionate, motivated and dedicated team. Help us to maintain our stake and grow it so that we can continue putting our efforts in Cardano and contribute our part in helping reach this ecosystem to achieve its goals.

You can contact me directly via Telegram in case you have questions or you’re considering to stake with us to support our activities.

Thank you for your support.

Ron JUNO stake pool

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