I would like to know if approaches suggested by adapools.org is endorsed by Cardano Foundation so that we all can follow.
Initially I thought adapools.org is just another explorer project which got grant from Cardano Foundation similar to pooltools.io and Pegas. But these days, there are a lot of dependencies with adapools.org to be part of Cardano stake pools.
Delegators are getting messages from adapools bot in case one of your relays is taken down for maintenance. For delegators, it is like your pool is down as they don’t understand relays redundancy and frequent updates required. Pool operators are losing delegators due to this feature.
adapools.org has an extended meta data through which you can stop relays alarms for 2 hours maintenance mode and inform your delegators. This feature makes it mandatory that extended meta data is needed as part of stake pool registration in case you need to run a serious stake pool business.
adapools.org has their own cost calculation. At the moment, it is very harmful to smaller stake pool operators as cost is shown as 20% - 80% range. Which will definitely make your pool unattractive to delegators especially when they are integrated with Yoroi.
I am not questioning their math but this much cost on YoY basis will not happen when d goes down and k increases.
In case we all agree that we need to go through registration method suggested by adapools.org using extended meta data then I request Foundation to update documentation so that we all can follow.
Queries are :
Is adapool.org is the way forward? Follow whatever suggested by them during pool registration?
Or Foundation will define standards to be followed during meta data registration?
It is not how they calculate costs more so how the costs are imposed on the small pools. Prior to the 340 minimum fee it was much more forgiving for the small pool and would reward the delegates that chose decentralization and smaller stake pools. However the heavy handed implementation of making this a fixed fee this unfairly punishes the already struggling smaller pools. The fee should’ve been a variable fee floor this would scale with the pools and remain to be fair as pools get established in the system.
This is not an Adapools problem more so protocol issue IMO.
Truth is the system is designed to consolidate stake in the larger pools and is not currently optimized to support the amount of pools we have. This will not be fixed short term by adjustment of K or a0 the solution is find more ADA.
True we have a protocol level problem but when adapools.org shows very high cost while people are using Yoroi and at their site how smaller pools are expected to get delegators?
This means, Cardano is not at all supportive for a healthier competition and site like adapools.org makes it even worst for smaller pools survival.
It is even worse than that with adapools.org. This website lists our new pool (started last Saturday) currently at place 535 with a ROA of 0.00% and a fee of 18.43%.
All those numbers are complete nonsense including the ranking. We charge a variable fee of 1%. Our pools current active stake (this epoch) is 0 - because it is a new pool - thus it cannot mint blocks in this epoch and in consequence ROA is n/a and not 0.00%. A ROA rating of 0.00% would only be justified if our stake would be high enough and the pool is for whatever reason not minting any blocks.
How are we (or other new pools) supposed to attract new delegates if now even Yoroi uses the same ranking? I am 100% sure that if delegates would assign in total a stake of 20m ADA to our pool, the ROA, the fees and so on would be similar to other 1% fee, 250k pledge pools that already have such a stake.
New pools are given no chance as well from the start.
Yoroi selection of our pool below. Who will select a pool with 20.90% cost?. I tried to contact adapools.org in their telegram chat and send messages multiple times but there is no response.
We can debate on protocol parameters and get it towards an acceptable range but it is very unfortunate that very less number of people are even ready to raise their voice on these subjects.
Are we a community going to follow everything as dictated?
It would be great if you can elaborate your opinion please?.
For example, I have delegator messaged me in my telegram chat due to first feature that I have mentioned. He was panic that my pool gone down due to this alarm functionality.
And the extended meta data concept makes pool registration dependent on adapools.org defined approach. For me its kind of centralized approach suggested by a 3rd party unless it comes out as a standard from Cardano Foundation.
And cost shown in Yoroi and their website. Delegators started shifting their stake to bigger pools due to this.
Thanks for bringing this into discussion, from what you’ve posted this should be addressed (if we want a fairer system) and modified accordingly, one of the reasons why i love this project, is that i believe it is rooted in making a better system.
I think for the benefit of all involved in Cardano and to make it a stronger and more varied eco system we want a distributed network both geographically and financially, this is what will drive ADA forward for the long term.
Credit to Adapools for creating their tool which i continue to use as well as PoolTool, i think your comments and suggestions to amend the data a little will assist them in providing the information in a balanced way.
This has highlighted an important area in how everyone can be better informed as to how this data will affect your staking decisions; for me i’m trying to support the little guy, to do this (whilst i don’t have loads of ADA) i have set a few different wallets so that i can divide my support.
No, at all, but I would be expecting very deep knowledge from those who raises questions, about how the protocol works. So, pls read the Ouroboros, papers, the Ledger spec and the design spec and after that we can have discussion, but until I do not see from ppl (even from self-proclaimed experts pool ops) to fully understand how the whole protocol works, I do not want any debate especially a debate from a very small data set. So, pls we should come back to this in at least half year time.
And do not get me wrong I did not want to be rude (and if it seems like ad hominem then I am sorry) but as rational as I could.
This debate is not about protocol parameters. I am highlighting concerns / real issues smaller pool operators are facing due to so called features from adapools.org. I am not here to debate on protocol parameters as I don’t think even a handful of stake pool operators would have read the complete protocol design papers.
Science and technology in action is different. We had theory first and now the implementation is in front of all of us. You can allow any 3rd party to exploit and kill the ecosystem or you can accept constructive feedback without discounting person’s background and his eligibility to comment.
This debate is not about protocol parameters. I am highlighting concerns / real issues smaller pool operators are facing due to so called features from adapools.org. I am not here to debate on protocol parameters as I don’t think even a handful of stake pool operators would have read the complete protocol design papers.
Science and technology in action is different. We had theory first and now the implementation is in front of all of us. You can allow any 3rd party to exploit and kill the ecosystem or you can accept constructive feedback without discounting person’s background and his eligibility to comment.
Thank you for the feedback. My intention is to see Cardano decentralized like most of us around. I do understand adapools.org has done an excellent job. Hope they will listen to these concerns soon.
Expecting stake pool operators to read protocol design papers doesn’t make sense to me. There are different roles we all need to play in this ecosystem. There will be dApp developers in future who will be working on plutus/marlow without having to worry about protocol parameters.
Stake pool operators are the first impacted parties due to some of these variables and their voice is based on experience of running a pool which should be heard irrespective of how knowledgeable they are with protocol design.
I think it’s not what @rdlrt meant. But reading the shelley specs paper would have set your expectations at the right level.
Everything that is unfolding right now hardly comes as a surprise for whoever read those papers. I would actually go further : for my part, I am actually pleasantly surprised by the low a0 parameter that allows so many to survive. Many more than what I expected when I first read about the pledge… It might boil down to how you want to see the glass.
As a long term supporter of Cardano, I watch IOHK youtube videos, Charles AMAs, Lars explaining protocol parameters and of course detailed explanation from people like Umed (Sky light pools)
I think this level of knowledge is sufficient to run a pool operation. Technical team is always focused on their knowledge on protocol design which is based on scientific papers. Not all people have the knowledge or capability to understand everything written in the scientific papers. Lets accept these facts. Still we all are trying to contribute in whatever roles possible based on our skills.
Anyway my focus was never on protocol. I started this topic to highlight the issues faced currently due to adapools.org features…
