Sep 18, 2021
ASPA Partner Focus #2 — Announcing the Latest Stake Pool Operators Partnering with Ardana
Welcoming the New SPOs
Last week we announced the very first stable pool operators (SPOs) to join the Ardana Stake Pool Alliance (ASPA) This week are excited to introduce the next batch of SPOs to the community! As a reminder, if you are an SPO and would like to apply for ASPA, please click here and fill out our application.
CarPool [VROOM]
https://twitter.com/CarPoolCrypto
The idea for CarPool was born last summer when the founder, Fletcher, was carpooling with colleagues as part of an emergency Covid-19 response. The team was testing and providing education to rural nursing homes. One of Fletcher’s colleagues regularly spoke about her experiences with cryptocurrency and other blockchain projects during these car journeys. As a result, Fletcher was immediately interested, particularly in Cardano. In Fletcher’s words, “Drawn to evidence-based practices and research, Cardano was a natural fit. It soon became one of the first crypto assets I would own; every day filled with learning about the ecosystem and community. I was deeply inspired and still am.”
CarPool is run by Fletcher, a seasoned health professional with advanced knowledge of systems and projects management. His business partner has a career in IT and is also a Cardano stake pool expert. CarPool also maintains stable infrastructure with contingencies to ensure 99% uptime.
CarPool views Ardana as a fascinating ecosystem that brings to life many essential features to Cardano. The Stablecoin system, Vaults, Auction protocols, DANA token and Swap, Governance, Rewards, and other features are all well-designed in their view. They also praise that the system’s thoughtful and thorough architecture is on track to bring decentralised finance to Cardano far. Fletcher also remarked that the Ardana system protocols appear to align with Cardano’s core aim of redistributing power from unaccountable structures to the edges.
Santo [SANTO]
Santo began in June 2021. The founder, Chris Nunez, mined Bitcoin for three years and spent $2000 per month on electricity. Plus, the cost of mining Bitcoin is expected to only increase in the future. When Chris switched to Cardano, the costs went down dramatically to $20 a month, far less expensive and much more earth-friendly!
Santo will be a great addition to Ardana as Chris is a VC-backed technology executive and system administrator. Santo just upgraded its servers to 8core 30g RAM and are Alonzo ready. Since the upgrade, they have already minted four blocks.
Santos believes that partnering with Ardana’s ASPA will be hugely beneficial for Santo and is excited about the ground floor opportunities available by working with Ardana.
ADABreathes [AIR]
https://twitter.com/ADABreathes?t=MT-jeQhfToxmYnEugwb63A&s=09
ADABreathes is a Cardano stake pool that allows users to delegate their ADA to win rewards. It is a not-for-profit organisation that donates 10% of the stake pool operators rewards to social and environmental causes. The Ardana and Cardano community and vision are certainly in alignment with AIR’s values. All three seek to change the world and provide a positive and meaningful impact to others by giving digital and economic identity to the people lacking it. AIR is particularly interested in Ardana because they believe stablecoins and DeFi are the tools needed to give people an economic identity.
The founder resides in Lisbon, Portugal and holds a Masters in Engineering, and is passionate about philosophy.
Koala Pool [KOALA]
https://twitter.com/KOALA_Steve?s=09
Koala Pool started out intending to create a stake pool that went beyond monetary gains alone. When the Australian bushfires began to spread in the summer of 2019, KoalaPool was born with an objective to raise funds to support Australia’s native wildlife.
Steve, the founder, regards Cardano as the current best shot at repairing and replacing the systems that have failed us. Steve stated, “We must restore trust in our systems of governance, finance, privacy, etc. For too long has the will of the people been sold out by the few.” The long-term plan for KoalaPool is to turn it into a decentralised charity system.
One of the primary reasons Koala Pool chose to partner with Ardana was that Ardana offers unparalleled support to community stake pools. The biggest threat to a POS system is the centralisation of stake and power. DeFi systems will attract a lot of stakes, but the best choice for SPO will be the ones that support and promote decentralisation to dominate the space.
Sprout Pool [SPRO]
https://twitter.com/SproutPool
Sprout Pool began in February 2021. A German-Canadian SPO from Vancouver, BC, donates 10%+ of profits used to plant trees. Sprout Pool admires the academic-based and scientific approach Cardano uses to develop their network. Unfortunately, most other blockchains are preoccupied with winning the race and are not as methodical in their approach as Cardano.
In terms of leadership style, Sprout is a place for users to educate themselves about Cardano’s features. They believe focusing on helping newcomers understand how things work is one of the most vital parts of building an ecosystem.
What attracted Sprout Pool to Ardana was giving people the opportunity to invest in a blockchain while lowering the effects of price fluctuations with its native currency. They believe that what the team puts together has the potential to become a huge success.
The partnership between an SPO and a new stablecoin offers both parties great exposure and a connection with existing ecosystem users, the delegators of the stake pools. Sprout Pool and Ardana are looking forward to working together very soon.
GAIA Stake Pool [GAIA]
https://twitter.com/GAIAstakepool
GAIA stake pool joined Cardano in 2017 and is managed by Brian and Lisa Lee. Brian looks after the pool operations and social media while Lisa is in charge of the podcast and photography. GAIA’s primary goal is to help the planet. They give one-third of their profit to green initiatives and re-invest one-third back into the pledge program. GAIA has donated over $4,200 to date to charities dedicated to helping the environment.
Cardano stood out to GAIA as it was the only blockchain building a network and developing features based on peer-reviewed research. They believe the values, technology, and decentralisation Cardano uses will play a key role in returning balance to the world. Apart from Cardano helping the environment, it will also give the world’s population control over their finances, personal information, and voting power.
GAIA is particularly interested in Ardana’s model as it will be set up to deliver extremely low fees to customers, and the voting mechanism with exDANA is a very fair system that rewards long-term holders. Another advantage is that voting cannot be easily co-opted by buying a large amount of DANA.
GAIA wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who supported their stake pool and is looking forward to a long and fruitful partnership with Ardana.
GROW TEAM [GROW]
GROW began its journey as the 49th stake pool to register for mainnet on July 29th, 2020, the first day of the Shelley era on Cardano. By that time, GROW had already committed hundreds of hours to help other SPOs begin their operations and educate the community about Cardano. They were the first mission-driven stake pool to provide on-chain metadata stored Proof of Donations for our charity to Save the Children.
GROW’s leadership team is composed of technical, marketing, and grassroots humanitarian experts. Their SPO comes from twenty-two years of IT Systems Engineering and owning a Managed Service Provider with an impressive zero data loss track record.
Regards Ardana, GROW loves that investors have the opportunity to keep a diverse portfolio while managing their assets. They also think it’s exciting that the Ardana Savings Module allows dUSD holders the ability to earn an interest rate on their funds. GAIA also remarked that Ardana’s vision to be a financial solution for everyone, from the large financial institution to the farmer in Ethiopia, gives them confidence that this is a true partner.
StakePool247.eu [EU01]
https://twitter.com/StakePool247
EU01 was first launched on ITN. The owner is one of the founding members of SPOCRA (an SPO Association) and a Catalyst Circle member (an organisation that represents SPOs). EU01 believes in Cardano because of its extraordinary community, scientific approach, and state-of-the-art technology.
What first sparked EU01’s interest in Ardana at the beginning was the stablecoins and liquidity pools. Now, EU01 is looking forward to the partnership and becoming an active community member.
ADAOZ [ADAOZ]
https://twitter.com/cardanodeau
Peter Bui started the stake pool believing that it would be a simple process to help decentralise the network and make some ADA on the side. However, he quickly discovered there was a lot more to it than that.
To gain enough pledges and delegation to the pool, in the beginning, he combined his ADA with the new team members in order to attract more significant delegates. After a lot of time and effort, the stake pool was successful and is now operating smoothly. In late February, ADAOZ began with 1000 ADA pledges, and currently, at the beginning of September, they have grown to 10.8M delegation staked with a boost from IOG’s 3.2M ADA delegation strategy.
ADAOZ is composed of five individuals, with each team member working on a different aspect of the stake pool and Cardano ecosystem. ADAOZ is very active and also hosts a podcast, YouTube channel, and is involved in other Cardano projects.
Peter Bui stated that stablecoins are one of the most valuable parts of crypto and are underestimated. For example, Tether has a market cap of 66.811B. He believes, Ardana’s approach to being an on-chain asset-backed stable coin is a good and transparent approach to realising its actual value.
In regards to ASPA, ADAOZ stated, “We are excited for the project and its approach to engaging with stake pool operators!”
LongShortSignal [LSS]
https://twitter.com/lss_cardanopool?lang=en
LongShortSignal is a Taiwan-based Cardano Stake Pool Operator and a member of the Single Pool Alliance. There are two partners, Albert Ingles and Amber Irvine. They are both using pseudonyms as they would like to remain anonymous due to their high profile within the fixed income and hedge fund space. They both have the technical know-how to provide a stable Taiwan-based stake pool that has produced over 250 blocks and has achieved ~5% APY for their delegators.
With one partner bringing a quantitative research background to the partnership, the two soon started a macro and crypto signals and portfolio management service. Following their research into the blockchain space, it soon became apparent that Cardano was the blockchain to focus on.
LSS remarked, “[Ardana’s] decentralised stablecoin will prove incredibly important in the DeFi space and Danaswap will capitalise on this. It is also exciting to note that “staked” ADA will also be able to be used as collateral in their pools.”
With a strong background in traditional finance and gravitation towards DeFi, LSS believes they are uniquely positioned to identify solid investment opportunities, which is why they have chosen to partner with Ardana through ASPA.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading the second article in the ASPA Partner Focus Series! Any interested stake pools that would like to join Ardana Stake Pool Alliance (ASPA) click this link to access our application, and you could be featured on our website and in a future ASPA Partner Focus article. We at Ardana understand that for DeFi on Cardano to flourish, stake pools must be engaged from inception to adoption.
Ardana
Ardana is an on-chain asset-backed stablecoin protocol and decentralised exchange stable asset liquidity pool built on Cardano. The stablecoin is over collateralised with on-chain Cardano native assets facilitating borrowing, and the decentralised exchange allows for highly capital efficient trading between stablecoins and identical assets with low-risk income from fees for liquidity providers.
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