Real world problems of a new stakepool - the blocked way to the first block

English
1

Hello Cardano community!

Today i would like to talk about the real world problems of a fresh started stakepool in Feb/March 2021.
(english is not my native language so please bear with me)

We are now live for 1 month and we managed to attract 40K of stake in this time (which was very hard work for weeks). We have 2K in pledge plus 500 registration fee. Considering the current ADA price of around $1, its been quite an investment for us (Webservers, Website, Plugins, SSL-certificate, Theme, this all adds up…)

When I look at the unbelievable high numbers that are necessary in pledge/stake to finally get some rewards, i am feeling desperate already.

Since we do not produce blocks we can not attract delegators. And since we do not attract delegators, we do not get enough stake to produce any blocks. It’s like the ouroborous snake…

With the current price, we will NEVER be able to reach or buy 500K ADA or more pledge like other pools that are early adopters to finally gain rewards. At the moment, becoming a stake pool operator seems pretty much useless. It is a bug in the system, when hard working, qualified and motivated people work their a$$es off and nothing happens… for months.

Something has to happen in the protocol, but how can we make sure that no one can have more than 2-3 filled up pools? (which is fair enough concerning rewards, I think)

It has to be a mechanism that huge companies like binance and etoro cannot outmaneuver with their money. If you connect and limit 2 pools to a single social security number, binance will force its employees to open up pools for them, same with tax numbers or company IDs. They will just open up new companies and move their pools to them.

Do you see any way
a) to prevent a concentration of staking pool power in big companies or multipool-operators?
b) to reward new “real” hard working SPOs so they get fair rewards from the very first moment?

If nothing happens in the very near future, we will see a lot of small pools dying and only more new pools that are created by multipool-operators that are already millionairs. THIS is NOT decentralization.

2

Hey there!

I understand your concerns, but i’ll make some points for you to consider.

  1. The network is in the beginning, you can’t expect that a equilibrium is reached in less than 1 year; let alone 1 month in your case.

  2. Consider what you are saying by not letting a pool be runned by whomever chooses, corporation or not, to do it. Saturation is doing it’s job.

  3. Running 1 pool is though, if binance have more than one, and not only binance is doing it, means that are many people involved in the process. Which are too hard working SPO’s btw.

  4. Just beacuse your neighbor is succeeding doesn’t mean you will. Albeit doing the same thing.

  5. Don’t twist the concept of decentralization just beacuse you don’t think it’s working. 324k delegators worth of 71.7% of the C.S. staked and 2k active pools say otherwise. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, in less than 1 year.

Stay strong! Cheers!

1 Like
3

concerning 2.
No, saturation is NOT at all doing its job. It creates more multipool operators. thats all.

4

Please, don’t throw away the thought process of some of the best minds in the industry and academia, regarding the subject.

Don’t you think that running multi-pools isn’t profitable in the long-run?

Don’t you actually know that by experience?

What you think will happen when the network reachs equilibrium and you get being SPO of 1 pool the same profit, if that is all you want to make out of this, of 2 or more?

And what about the costs of running multi-pools? Is it really worth to be a multi-pool SPO?

You have a valid point in saying that “the early bird got the worm”, but that’s just how it is! You can’t circumvent that in any way.

Still, give it some time and patience. Perhaps now was not your time to enter the market. Did you have that in consideration before dive in?

You can’t blame on the teacher your faillure to succeed if you didn’t do the homework…

In Strength!