This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool whose mission is to help dog shelters find loving homes for stray dogs: DOG Pool [DOG].

The previous guest was a stake pool that donates to charities that are helping disadvantaged students to complete their education.

This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano SPO Column, interview with DOG Pool [DOG]

Hi, thanks for your time. Tell us something about your team, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

First of all, thank you very much for taking time to write a blog to support different pools. We really appreciate your help! 

We are a group of Technology professionals and passionate dog lovers from different countries who also love the philosophy of Cardano. We believe that Cardano can make a better world not only for humans but also for animals.

DOG POOL mission is to help canine charities to give rescue dogs a home, and prevent them being killed in inhumane ways. We believe that all together we can make dogs live much better. We are descendants of Argentinian-born Taiwanese, two of us currently live in Taiwan, we have a technician living in Argentina and our SPO is living in Australia.

What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become Stake Pool Operators (SPO)

Knowing the lack of transparency, bureaucracy, remittance restrictions, inflation and currency devaluation in the South American banking system, we have been looking for ways to preserve the value and defend our property rights.

We first came across cryptocurrency through Jose, the SPO of ADA ONE POOL, who is our friend and has been promoting CARDANO with free talks in Argentina since 2018, and because we listened to him, we sold our Bitcoin to support Cardano because we wanted to support decentralization. 

Now we are back in Taiwan to study and continue to promote CARDANO in Taiwan, but since we are dog lovers (one of us even adopted 5 dogs) and we think the idea of CARDANO is also diversity and inclusion, we want to be able to do something for dogs and promote CARDANO in Taiwan at the same time, so we decided to set up a pool to support decentralization of the CARDANO blockchain by doing our part.

Please tell us more about your mission, how are you helping dogs find a loving home? Are you involved with dog shelters and charities?

Most of our help so far has been in the form of monetary sponsorship, volunteering, encouraging dog adoptions, helping with donations to cover medical expenses, and helping some stray dogs shelters find willing adopters. Currently we are working only with four small stray dog shelters and only two of them accept ADA. 

We know that big or famous shelters could catch more attention and get more donations, so we are only looking for smaller shelters to donate to. We have successfully helped seven dogs find homes. We are not involved with dog shelters nor charities but sometimes we volunteer in some activities. We prefer to donate to dog shelters that accept ADA.

If anyone knows of stray dog shelters that accept ADA donations, we would love to work with them and would be grateful if you would contact us.

If you had to explain why Cardano matters to people outside the ecosystem, how would you go about it? What are the benefits of crypto and blockchain in everyday life?

As mentioned earlier, CARDANO is different from other blockchains in that it is an academic blockchain, with a scientific approach, peer reviewed, energy efficient, decentralized, has many stake pools on topics related to climate, animals, oceans, education and charity, and many other related projects that have a positive impact on the world, which can make the Cardano blockchain better known to people outside the ecosystem.

In addition, it can deliver true freedom of wealth and asset management to people as masters of their own property, eliminating the need for intermediaries to increase transparency and reduce the chance of corruption in the banking system and government. So CARDANO must do well in GOVERNANCE, many people are looking forward to it!

Awesome. Any closing thoughts? Where can people stay in touch?

Our long-term goal is to let more Taiwanese know about CARDANO, although our pool is small and we don’t have many delegators, we sincerely hope our pool could continue to grow, although currently almost all small pools are facing the difficulty to find delegators, and the current protocol doesn’t help much small pools, and we really hope it could be changed soon in the future. 

We also hope that more people will become aware of our pool and mission, and support small pools so that we can truly support the decentralization of CARDANO. We are a small single pool with a big heart and beautiful mission. Hopefully we can grow more soon and help more stray dogs in the world!! 

If you want to contact us, the most common channels we use are TWITTER or write to us at our email address.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool that is donating to charities that are helping disadvantaged students to complete their education: Wish Pool [WISH].

The previous guest was a stake pool operated by Crypto Buff who has been working in the industry for some time and has his own YouTube channel.

This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano SPO Column, interview with Wish Pool [WISH]

Hi, thanks for your time. Tell us something about your team, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

First of all, thanks to Patryk for inviting us to this interview. We are a group with a strong background in server administration (Unix/Linux, Windows and even mid-range), project management, and various industries including the financial industry. You can say that we have a level of maturity as the team has between 20 to 30 years of industry experience.

I am the oldest in the team and I take care of day to day operations and marketing. We love dabbling in technology and learning new things so managing a Cardano stake pool was very interesting to us. We are fortunate to be based in Singapore where it is easy to find affordable, up to date hardware and high speed, secure infrastructure.

In our spare time, we like to do photography, film-making and charity work. That is why one of our goals is to give regular donations to educational charities.

What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become Stake Pool Operators (SPO)?

Like a lot of people, we first heard of Cardano after watching Charles Hoskinson’s white board presentation explaining why Cardano is a 3rd generation crypto after Bitcoin and Ethereum. After watching other videos and reading about the roadmap, I was hooked.  

I especially liked the fact that Cardano had a mission of banking the unbanked. My thinking at the time was: “If I am ever going to invest in crypto, why not go with a coin that can do a lot of good while I earn money.” 

When the option to maintain a Stake Pool became available, I tried it out first in Testnet out of interest. I have a pretty strong Unix/Linux administration background and being an SPO was quite interesting to me. I progressed to Mainnet after meeting other SPOs who were struggling to mint their first blocks.

We decided to pool our resources together and delegate our spare ADA to a member of the group in a rotating queue to help them mint their first blocks. This was the beginning of F2LB and it is now an established community group helping pools mint their first blocks. We are still very active at F2LB guiding new SPOs and answering their questions.  

We have taken ourselves out of the delegation queue to give chances to others who really need the delegation. Nevertheless, we still continue delegating every epoch to the first Pool in the F2LB queue as we strongly believe that this is the right thing to do to keep Cardano truly decentralised.

What is the mission of your stake pool? Are delegator rewards affected when you donate to charities?

Before we even started Wish Pool, we were already helping out educational charities that support disadvantaged children to complete their higher education. We even helped to create documentary films to raise exposure for educational charities that we support.

We do this because we firmly believe that giving the gift of education to a worthy student can help him break the cycle of poverty within his family. Thus, when we created Wish Pool, we pledged part of our own profits towards helping educational charities. Note that we take this only from our own profits. Delegator rewards are not affected.

Our belief in the power of education is so strong that even during our first year when Wish Pool had no profit for months at a time, we still consistently donated to the charities that we support. Thus, if you delegate your ADA to Wish Pool, you will get 100% of your usual rewards while indirectly helping disadvantaged students to complete their education. In the long run, we are hoping that successful students are able to get their families out of poverty.

What are you most looking forward to with Cardano in the coming years? How can blockchain technology help the world?

I look forward to the day when Cardano has completed its development roadmap so it can realise its full potential. I look forward to the day when there is mass adoption. When people are safely using cryptocurrencies in their everyday lives from purchasing goods to seamless cross border money transfer.

For this to happen, I believe there should be a balance between regulation and innovation. I would prefer less oversight but recent scams have shown the dangers bad actors can inflict if left unchecked. The right amount of oversight would allow innovation to flourish while at the same time make people more confident to invest in cryptocurrencies.

As the market cap of Cardano grows, it would be less vulnerable to price manipulation and we would have a truly decentralised currency not managed by any single government.

Great contribution. Any additional comments? Where can people stay in touch?

One of the projects that we are maintaining is the Cardano SPOT Check. This is a helper site for Cardano Stake Pool Operators. It started as a site for SPOs to check their nodes to ensure that they are able to build blocks. Eventually the site has expanded to include tips and tricks for installing, maintaining and troubleshooting Cardano nodes.  

We could have kept all this knowledge to ourselves and kept a competitive advantage against other SPOs. However, we firmly believe in Cardano and in order for it to grow, the community should continue sharing knowledge and improving the ecosystem. United we stand, divided we fall. Check out Cardano SPOTCheck.

To learn more about us, please visit our website.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool operated by Crypto Buff who has been working in the industry for some time and has his own YouTube channel: Crypto Buff Stake Pool [CBUFF].

The previous guest was a stake pool operated by Ian from Worcestershire, UK, who donates to Arts Emergency and UNICEF Ukraine.

This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano SPO Column, interview with Crypto Buff Stake Pool [CBUFF]

Hi, thanks for your time. Tell us something about yourself, where are you based and what is your background?

I was born in Toronto, and I grew up in Mississauga. I went to college and graduated with a marketing degree from Humber. I went into sales after graduating, and now I currently sell Bitcoin mining hardware full-time. 

My biggest goal after graduating was to work in the crypto industry. At first, it was hard to find jobs that were hiring locally in this field. I decided to create my YouTube channel “Crypto Buff” as a way to make my own way into the crypto industry. 

Making this channel helped expose me to brand new opportunities in this space, it helped me secure a job selling Bitcoin miners full time. I love waking up knowing this is my career.

What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become a Stake Pool Operator (SPO)?

I wanted to be part of the Cardano ecosystem, I like the technology and community. I make content about the Cardano ecosystem for beginners who don’t know where to start. It’s fun to have a role in the decentralisation of a blockchain. 

When trying to start my stake pool, I had no idea where to start. Someone from the Cardano community reached out to help streamline the process for me. With his help, I was able to launch my stake pool in March 2022. 

I take pride in being part of this ecosystem at such an early start. Creating this stake pool allows me to be part of the beginning phases of Cardano’s adoption. I’m also looking forward to how stake pools will evolve, there are projects that are working to integrate DeFi and stake pools. 

I find it fascinating how there can be multiple different layers for just one operator. I think Charles Hoskinson explained it the best. Stake pool operators are like the gas stations for the Cardano ecosystem.

What are your thoughts about the current DeFi landscape on Cardano and what are you most looking forward to in the coming months and years?

I believe we’re extremely early. It’s hard to say which projects will be the leading platforms on Cardano. They’re all very unique in their own way. Time will tell which ideas will best resonate with retail and institutional investors. I’m looking forward to projects who are using Cardano’s liquid staking to its full potential. The double, triple yield events are very interesting!

In the coming years, I look forward to more recognition for the Cardano ecosystem. There has been this narrative that’s been spread around Cardano being a ghost chain. From my research, I’m seeing the opposite. The community is as strong as ever, and we’re starting to see the key pillars start to build out on Cardano. 

It’s going to be interesting to see which projects will be the go to projects in their respective sector. (DeFi, DEX, wallets, NFTs, etc…) In the coming months, there will be a high level of speculation in the Cardano ecosystem on these projects. I love to speculate on the potential of projects, this is something I’m looking forward to very much.

How is this bear market affecting your YouTube channel? Have you noticed less views and interaction?

I can’t speak for others, but my YouTube analytics have taken a hit. I mean it makes sense, there’s less interest in crypto as a whole because we are in a bear market. It can be hard to make content during a bear market, what I’m doing is focusing on content that is fun for me to film. 

I think it’s important to create content that will benefit the community, there is a huge knowledge gap in crypto, I’m doing my best to bridge that gap into digestible content. 

Great contribution. Any closing comments? Where can people find you?

I think it’s important to truly understand what you are investing in. I try my best to break down that knowledge gap in my videos, but don’t take mine or any YouTubers at face value. There are many things moving in the background of a video, and it’s hard to determine which videos are genuine. 

Remember to Do Your Own Research (DYOR), use videos about crypto as a way to bring projects to your attention, then do your due diligence on it.

Don’t invest more than you’re comfortable losing, create a DCA strategy that you can handle. Consistency is what will make you successful. 

Here’s my Twitter and my YouTube channel. 

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool operated by a diverse blend of people united by a love of cannabis and blockchain: CardanoWeed [WEED].

Last week’s guest was a stake pool operator who’s a Cardano content creator with his own Youtube channel and operates 4 stake pools.

This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano SPO Column, interview with CardanoWeed [WEED]

Hi, I appreciate you taking the time. Tell us something about your team, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

Hello! The WEED Stakepool team is a diverse blend of people from different backgrounds and generations, but we’re united by a love of cannabis and blockchain!

What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become Stake Pool Operators (SPO)?

The path that led us to Cardano started with the incredible content provided by Input Output Global and Charles Hoskinson. 

The free education contained in the blog posts and Youtube videos (not to mention research papers) that have been shared by the developers of the network are invaluable, and inspired us to pursue a more fundamental role in the ecosystem as Stakepool Operators.

You’ve been active on Crypto Twitter for a long time, also in Spaces. What has your experience been? Would you recommend Twitter to stay up to date with everything Cardano?

Using Twitter to stay up to date with everything Cardano is a must! I recommend following anyone and everyone who’s building on the network! 

Twitter Spaces in particular are an amazing way to peek behind the PFP and hear people share parts of their perspective and outlook that don’t necessarily translate through Tweets. 

The crypto and cannabis industries are projected to grow in the next decades. What synergies do you envision between these two worlds? How can blockchain help the cannabis industry?

Cannabis consumers can benefit from blockchain integration via perfect, transparent accounting and instant, secure connections. 

Just like many other agricultural products, Cannabis can only benefit from increased transparency, as growers and distributors who put in the effort to make a safe and enjoyable product can seamlessly share the cultivation data with all interested parties and effortlessly prove their hard work. 

After a consumer has chosen what type of cannabis they want to enjoy, blockchain will then provide them with a direct link to the cultivator and manufacturer, so they can share their experiences and develop a connection with the brands and the people behind them (no matter how large or tiny those brands may be).

Great contribution. Any final thoughts? Where can people stay in touch?

Thanks for reaching out to us and for thinking of WEED Stake Pool! 

Final thoughts… We’re very early, so don’t be discouraged if your grand ambitions aren’t achieved as quickly as you expect. There’s potential for the world to experience a peaceful revolution thanks to the tools being developed as we speak, but it’s up to early adopters to defend and perpetuate the open-source and transparent ethos of blockchain however we can! 

People can stay in touch by reaching out to us on Twitter and in the WEED Discord! 

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool co-owned by two good friends running on bare metal in London with additional relays around the world: LambdaHoneypot [HONEY].

Last week’s guest was a stake pool stake pool operated by two brothers that support charities helping foster children find a loving home.

This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano SPO Column, interview with LambdaHoneypot [HONEY]

Hi, thanks for your time. Tell us something about your team, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

Lambda-Honeypot runs on bare metal in London with additional relays around the world. We run 5 different relays over 4 continents. The pool is co-owned by two good friends.

In the past we have contributed to several charities and have adopted Parly the Moonbear who is also our mascot and the bear in our logo!

One owner is based in the UK and operates the pool. They have over 15 years experience in the IT sector and built and maintains the pool, having even moved the pool’s physical location with minimal down time and no missed blocks.

The other owner lives in Germany and helps in marketing and managing social media. Previously they have experience in Chemical Engineering, but are now focused on bringing up two young children.

What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become Stake Pool Operators (SPO)?

We have always been big believers in crypto and the decentralised nature of it. We wanted to be more involved and hopefully contribute to the ecosystem using the experience we have with software development and system administration. After an initial attempt with Ethereum on Proof of Work we quickly became bigger fans of Proof of Stake when these chains started to emerge, largely due to the poor environmental impact of PoW mining.

We evaluated several options and decided Cardano was the best implementation of Proof of Stake for us to be involved in. This was largely based on the lack of any punishment (slashing), the fantastic community and the lower cost of entry compared to other chains.

What has been your experience as admins of the Cardano Single Pool Alliance (CSPA)? What do you think can be done to help single pools, especially small ones who are working towards minting their first block?

Overall it has been a very positive experience! It’s great to see so many SPOs committed to keeping Cardano decentralised and trying to keep the minimum attack vector of the network as high as possible. The list of current members can be seen here.

We are starting to see some great projects that focus / benefit CSPA members, for example VendingMachine, TosiDrop and StakingDAO. Projects that focus on single pool operators are great for raising visibility and giving delegators a reason to stake with single pool operators over established multipool groups. 

Regarding small single pool operators looking to mint their first block we recommend the F2LB initiative. We have been part of this initiative since the very start of our journey and they have helped many SPOs get their first blocks.

We also recommend the xSPO alliance, which is designed to help extra small size pools. They have a great community on discord helping each other and details can be found here.

You mentioned you’re working on Golang tools for SPOs. For those who don’t know, what is Golang? And how will these tools help Stake Pool Operators?

Golang is a programming language and we are working on SPO tools written in that language. Currently there are a lot of well known tools written in the RUST programming language, and Cardano itself is written in the Haskell language. 

We aim to push forward Charles Hoskinson’s recently shared vision of helping Cardano become a polyglot ecosystem. This means producing tools and components in a variety of programming languages.

At present, our tool only offers a simple way for SPOs to calculate leaderlogs with a timezone adjustment using IOG’s leaderlog implementation. For anyone interested the project is based here and is open source.

Great contribution. Any closing remarks? Where can people contact you

We would like to say a big thank you and highlight the support we have enjoyed from the Cardano Foundation (CF) and Input Output Global (IOG). This support allowed us to mint not only our first Block but now our 500th and was a life saver after going through 47 blockless Epochs.

The delegation from CF and IOG has also helped us follow our pool’s mission to help Bears, Bees and Delegates. Which we do through Charitable donations and offering consistent bonus rewards on top of block rewards to our delegates. We also actively support and engage with our delegates by offering sponsorship to fundraisers or sports events they participate in and asking for their opinions on pool matters.

To get in contact please send us a message on Twitter, Reddit or join our Telegram or Discord groups which can be found through our website.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool operated by two brothers that support charities helping foster children find a loving home: Envy Stake Pool [ENVY].

Last week’s guest was a stake pool that is operated by Rick, who is a solo operator originally from South Africa now living in London.

This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano SPO Column, interview with Envy Stake Pool [ENVY]

Hi, thanks for your time. Tell us something about your team, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

ENVY Stake Pool is a team of two brothers who own and operate the stake pool together. Sean, the older brother, has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and Thomas, the younger brother, as a degree in Economics. 

We came into this space in January of 2021 after having received $100 worth of Bitcoin and started investigating Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake blockchains and that eventually led us to Cardano!

What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become Stake Pool Operators (SPO)?

Initially, we wanted to dive into the nuances of each of the various Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake blockchains and assumed that to become a Bitcoin or Ethereum miner was too cost prohibitive.

So when we discovered how much more accessible being a Cardano SPO was compared to the other blockchains, we jumped right in! It was a fairly straightforward process learning how to set up a stake pool, and we really enjoyed learning about how to maintain all of the various keys as well as part of stake pool operation.

However, we quickly learned that being a Cardano SPO is not simply about knowing how to set up and maintain nodes on the Cardano network. Marketing is a large part of it too!

What is your pool’s mission? Why is it important to you?

We started ENVY Stake Pool thinking that it would be a really nice way to make passive income during the pandemic. However, once the stake pool was set up, we realized we needed to find ways to attract delegators. 

This led us to discovering Twitter and the vibrant Cardano Community there. Once we set up a Twitter account, we observed that there were a few stake pool operators that were doing this radical thing that we hadn’t considered, like taking part or all of their operator rewards and donating them to charity, like GROW pool, WHITE pool, Lighthouse Stake Pool, and ANEW pool. 

This blew our minds and changed our hearts, so we sought to find a mission to support. A friend of Sean’s has a sister who fosters multiple children and has adopted as well, and Sean wanted to support these efforts because of the incredible need that exists to give these children a loving home. Sean also wants to adopt some day so this seemed like the perfect fit for a mission to support!

Besides running the stake pool, are you involved in any other projects? Tell us more

Yes we are! We are involved actively in the Extra Small Stake Pool Alliance (xSPO). We love that community because it gives us a great community of other stake pool operators to support each other through marketing, technical aspects of running and maintaining a stake pool, and to enjoy talking too as we all experience this fun and crazy ride in the crypto space!

We are also a Core Member of FreeLoaderz, which is a coalition of stake pool operators and Cardano Community members who are trying to develop goods and services that bring value to the Cardano Community. We recently developed the SmartClaimz platform in collaboration with Drasil, who provides the backend services that power SmartClaimz, so we hope that will be a useful service to the Cardano Community!

We are also part of Mehen Finance, a fiat-backed stablecoin coming to Cardano, and are helping with some of the backend development and Systems Requirements documentation for that platform. It’s a great team with many qualified individuals from FreeLoaderz and Drasil who helped build SmartClaimz so we’re excited to see where that project will go!

Great contribution. Any final thoughts? Where can people stay in touch?

We just want to spread the importance of decentralization. An important aspect of security of the blockchain relies on having a large number of independent nodes that build in redundancy and reliability into the network in the event that a large number of nodes goes down. So please support and delegate to single stake pools. 

There are a number of great pools that vow to operate a single pool (Single Pool Alliance), are small and need support (xSPO Alliance), are mission-driven, operate bare metal (Bare Metal Alliance), and/or operate energy efficiently (Armada Alliance). So please support these communities! ENVY is a small pool that operates as a single pool, has mixed bare metal and cloud-based nodes, and has ARM-based nodes, so we’re trying it all out and moving in the right direction (haha)!

It’s best to stay in touch with us on our Discord or Twitter. You can find all of our socials on our website. Thank you very much for this opportunity to be interviewed by you!

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.