Q: You mentioned CRFA is working on stakepool accounting software, this got me thinking, what is this?
A: We noticed that each epoch, month we have to do some actions that could be automated like sending % of revenue to charity, reserving ADA for our epoch lottery.
Q: So it will withdraw rewards for stake pool and credit this into account + cost and distribute profit based on pledge to pool owners?
A: YES! This is a bit of a mess to manage this, some profit is pledge based, some is stake pool based and its harder when you have more owners
Q: Ok but this is not so easy, sometimes utility bill for electricity or cloud is in USD not always in ADA
A: This is true but it is possible to convert also and we are working on automation for ADA payments, for some things it will work well as more and more ppl have ADA addr
Q: Isn't that there are already accounting softwares that stake pools could use?
A: Sure they are but we want something relatively cheap (we are developing this) and also we want full integration with ADA payments so payments can automatically scheduled every epoch or month.
Q: Will you open source it?
A: For the moment we are looking for solve our problems and then we can see if we geneirify this. We also want to help our delegators with tax calculations like PoolTool is doing. We are considering Catalyst Proposal for this for Fund 7, 8 or 9.
Q: WOW, sounds awesome, I bet many stake pools are doing all this stuff manually
A: Yes, this is very mundane and stake pools shouldn't focus on such things but rather on developing new products or overall mission they have.
Q: Thank You, we are looking forward to your work!
I get asked a question why I am against MPOs (Multi Pool Operators).
Let me explain. It is a bit complex, they are not the worst in some cases albeit far from ideal.
It is all about added value.
I have been working as a Tech Lead now for years in rather large organisation. I have this position that somehow puts me in hierarchy higher. Over years however I noticed that ingenuity and many great ideas comes from people below my "level" and I felt this level things is stupid
In this sense ADA delegated to another stake pool could enable them to realize ideas I didn't even come across.
OK you could argue but as a multi SPO I could hire many people and we together would innovate on ideas and provide additional value to the Cardano ecosystem or?
- new page for Cardano Blockchain Insights based on data from @adapools_org -> adapools.org/groups, we will have soon a full historical backfil as well (!)
- turning our crfa-token-app (sending community tokens plus sending epoch rewards) with extra capability of accounting software for SPOs, btw: @ccwalletio we need to catch up next week
Accounting software means it will withdraw staking rewards, distribute rewards based on pledge
to owners and pool revenue will be shared among pool owners minus internal treasury, minus costs, minus epoch rewards, minus utility bills.
income - costs = profit and then automatically send to wallets of owners and companies / entities (e.g. charity ADA wallet, sponsorships)
Added value can vary:
- podcasts / youtube - e.g. H4SH
- develops library, TANGO, NUTS, BLOXB
- creates tools for Cardano, e.g. EASY1
- organises meetups in local country, e.g. POA, HERMES
- translates content to a local language, e.g. SWIM
- takes more active role in project catalyst, e.g. FAY
- develops SPO tools, e.g. CLIO1, EASY1, ATADA, BSCH
- develops UI community tools: PEGA, LOVE
- creates wallet: TITAN
- maintains relay nodes in exotic locations, e.g. ADA
- creates interesting consumer products, e.g. MUSE
Please note that mentioned pools are only examples, I missed tons of pools which provide additional value in those categories (!).
In terms of decentralized (!) smart contract platforms there are only two routes ahead, nothing else:
1. Scale on L2 (Ethereum, Cardano) 2. Scale on L1 with on chain Archivers (e.g. Solana)
Both have trade-offs.
1.) L2 scaling is not easy (see zkRollups, Optimistic Rollups or Hydra Isomorphic State Channels + ext), worst part could be user experience L1 <>L2 since technically eventually it will be solved and I mean eventually.
Those chains that hide L2 complexity from the user have adv.
2. Archivers (Solana), this could work but but but it gets rid of inclusive accountability, it becomes very expensive to check up on work > x years, where x is changing, also Solana hardware requirements and node requirements are quite high.
1. "Block production in Bitcoin is quite decentralized", This is NOT true, there are a few mining farms.
2. "Bitcoin is free and patent free", this is true for core BTC but Bitcoin mining is pretty much dominated by patented ASICs now
3. "Bitcoin is 100% decentralised development": no, of course not, in order to be a contributor you can open PR but there is a small group of people that merges this on or not. It is important to say there is no way to vote them out(!)
For Pool Operators (multi and single), it is gonna be increasingly hard to get delegators, like if it wasn't hard enough.
More companies are stepping up and launching ISPO and own pools.
It is both good and bad, really depends who you ask & from which angle you look at it.
For price of ADA this is great, for DeFi & NFTs and tokens - it is great but those not innovating will be eliminated, cruely
Is there any solution? No, I don't think so, it is by design and CRFA will also suffer, it already did, e.g. to MELD, MAL, etc.
The only choice for SPOs:
Step up the game, invest more into what attracts delegators (for the moment DeFi tokens on Cardano are all the range). It is not a cheap game, very few experienced Haskell / Plutus developers. Those who know it well have a serious competitive advantage for first-mover advantage.