Cosmos Validators Brief #10: Ztake
Ztake
As the father of a toddler daughter (that’s me and her in my profile photo) whom I can’t wait to teach how to code, I’ve recently been wondering how long it would take before the primary front-and-center persona for these Validator Briefs was going to be from a female…And I guess the answer is 10 Briefs (yes, Cryptium Labs’ Co-Founder, Hao Hua Sun Yin, is female, however in my mind that Brief came more-so from Adrian Brink).
This Brief comes from Mira Nugumanova (aka “MiraNu” in the Cosmos Riot chat), who runs the Cosmos Validator by the moniker “Mira — Ztake.org” Mira, along with Roman Storm, are the founders of Ztake.org and have been long-time Cosmos testnet Validators for over a year now.
Like nearly all the other Validators I’ve done Briefs on, the team was a named winner (“Mira”) in Cosmos’ Game of Stakes contest recently, having successfully stayed up and in the Validator set the entire duration of the Game. Additionally, being based in Seattle, Washington, they are also the only primary U.S.-based Validator I’ve done a Brief on so far (while Figment Networks has some server locations in the U.S. they are primarily hosting from Canada).
The team mentions this near the end of the Brief as it relates to the team having to pay attention to any U.S. regulations, guidelines, and/or taxes that might apply. Interesting stuff to watch, no doubt.
Tell me a bit about yourselves as much/ little as you guys would like to share.
We are a team of tech-savvy blockchain developers and enthusiasts who are based on the West Coast of United States. Our two founders — Roman Storm and Mira Nugumanova have been heavily involved in blockchain space for five years now, and prior to that have worked in Silicon Valley tech companies as well. We are excited about the space and follow crypto news closely. Both of us are regulars at local meetups and have visited multiple international blockchain conferences recently (web3 summit, devcon 4) — in a sense our lives revolve around blockchain nowadays. We took care all of the technical setup needed, so that you could easily stake your assets. We have joined Cosmos project about a year ago to provide a high quality validator services for the network as part of Ztake.org
Quick follow-up question: How are you and Roman differentiated in your responsibilities at Ztake?
Mira:
Once the [Cosmos] network is stabilized, I will focus on Cosmos hub project research and Roman will focus on developing contracts using Ethermint.
Outside of Cosmos/Tendermint, how have you been involved with blockchain so far? What projects have you participated in?
Most relevant to our involvement as validator in Cosmos, we are operating a mainnet validator for POA Network, testnet Polkadot node, as well as (at some time in the past) mined a couple of small POW coins. Otherwise we have developed widely-used smart contracts on Ethereum, audited smart contracts, consulted ICO launches, developed first in production cross-chain bridge that is used in production.
Where do you see the blockchain space evolving in the next 1–3 years.
We think we will see more news of corporate involvement, specifically companies launching private versions of publicly-developed blockchains. Most use cases will likely involve stablecoins, supply chain management and gamification. As for public chains, we think that the stage has been set and we are unlikely to see any new major players. A big driver for next hype cycle might be ETF when it finally gets approved.
What projects do you find particularly intriguing?
We are passionate about Cosmos, that’s why we are involved in it. Other than that, we are of course
fascinated with Ethereum and related L1 and L2 scaling technology — we think we will see some significant development there that will benefit everyone across blockchain space.
With regards to Cosmos, what do you think will be the biggest challenges faced by the project overall?
Short-term, we have to make sure we generate no negative news during the mainnet launch, as crypto sphere likes to discuss the failures of competitors. Medium-term we need to gain market interest, i.e. get listed on prominent exchanges, this gets people curious and involved. Long-term the challenges are same as other prominent projects: avoid uncertainty around dev team, achieve scaling, roll out competitive smart contract functionality (Ethermint) .
With regards to being a validator in Cosmos, what do you think will be the biggest challenges you face?
Ok, let’s get the trivial out of the way: of course we will do our best to provide 100% uptime, we’ll keep the client updated to the current version, the hardware capable and the network fast. We will never even consider doing anything that can endanger funds staked through us, that is unthinkable. When it comes to voting on proposals we value honesty, predictability, and making sure no one has a way to control or abuse the network or the funds. We will strike to follow all of the US regulatory guidelines and would try to educate our stakers on all of the recent developments in USA tax or law related to dPos.
The Ztake team is located online at: https://ztake.org/
Mira Nugumanova is on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/cryptomira1
Roman Storm is on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/rstormsf
