Chainode Tech — 2022 Year in Review
Wow, what a year it has been! Time in the blockchain space flies at a totally different pace, but the events that happened over the past 12 months definitely made it more difficult to bear (pun intended).
However, the beauty of the decentralized ecosystem is that despite the noise, price fluctuations, drama and overall unsettling conditions, projects keep building — and this was definitely our case. If you are already familiar with our work at Chainode Tech — you should already know by now that we are very focused on delivering quality staking services and supporting what we believe in related to tech and decentralized networks & infrastructures.
Let’s go through some of the key things that happened this year regarding our work as well as some thoughts and conclusions approaching the end of the year.
1. Proof of Stake Networks we joined in 2022
We started our PoS Validator journey in early 2019 and since then we are happy to share that we joined 20+ Networks as an infrastructure provider. We were already active as a Validator on projects like Solana, The Graph, Avalanche, KAVA, Akash Network & more, but there are certain networks that we decided to join this year and below you can find a brief description of them as well as our contributions.
Celestia
As a team with a strong technical background, different architectures are really interesting for us in terms of decentralized networks. Unlike the rest of the networks built this far, Celestia comes with a totally different approach: modularity. By decoupling the consensus and application execution layers, Celestia differentiates itself from the existing protocols, and this comes with a couple of interesting advantages: deploying a blockchain will become as easy as deploying a smart contract, scaling will be pushed forward with data availability sampling which means that Celestia’s throughput will scale in correlation with the number of users, secure interoperability for all Celestia chains, flexibility for developers to define their own execution environments (with initial focus on EVM and Cosmos SDK) & more.
We are really excited that our project joined the Celestia Testnet and we are cheering for the next development phases while looking forward to being even more actively involved.
Sui
Sui is a relatively new high-performance Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain that gained traction in 2022, focusing on throughput and low latency, one of the special features of the project being the use of its own programming language: Sui Move. The project is backed by Mysten Labs, a company founded by ex-employees of Meta’s (Facebook) Project Libra.
We are excited to have joined Sui as an infrastructure provider since the early Testnet phases.
Axelar Network
Cross-chain is a topic that gained traction in 2022. We strongly believe that cross-chain plays a massive role in the wider adoption of decentralized technologies, especially with the rise of Web3, as it improves the UX and other important aspects needed for reaching the next Billion users. Axelar Network is one of the first projects that started building in this area, and we have joined them as an infrastructure provider since the early stages of its development. Current external chains for which Axelar provides support are Aurora, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Fantom, Moonbeam, Polygon, Celo, Arbitrum, Kava EVM and all Cosmos chains that are automatically supported by default through IBC. As a Validator, this requires thoughtful and intensive infrastructure and we currently run RPC nodes on all previously mentioned chains.
In addition, over the past year, we also built some tools for the Axelar ecosystem. Among them, a Grafana dashboard for monitoring both your Validator and the hardware your validator runs on with all the metrics exposed over Prometheus as well as bringing BigDipper to the Axelar Network.
Wormhole Network
Wormhole is another pioneering project focused on building the interoperability layer. It is a communication bridge between Solana and other top decentralized finance (DeFi) networks. 2022 was not without its challenges for the Wormhole network, as it experienced a bridge hack back in February, from which it has successfully recovered. Moving tokenized assets seamlessly across blockchains is not an easy challenge to take upon, as bridges do have their own vulnerabilities, but Wormhole has made an immense progress, integrating no less than 21 high value chains such as Solana, Ethereum, Terra, BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Oasis, Algorand, Fantom, Karura, Acala, Klaytn, Celo, Near, Moonbeam, Terra 2, Injective, Aptos, Arbitrum, Pythnet and XPLA.
Our team has joined the Wormhole Network as a Guardian since its initial phases and is currently running RPC nodes for all the above mentioned chains.
Agoric
Agoric is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK that uses Tendermint Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and that functions as a smart contract platform, enabling developers to create decentralized applications (dApps) using composable JavaScript smart contracts and it was created with the scope of engaging more Web2 developers in the Web3 space.
We actively participated in the Agoric Testnet and we continue our support as an infrastructure provider on their Mainnet.
Extrnode
Extrnode is a decentralized, open-source and community driven RPC gateway initiated by Everstake, an infrastructure provider in the Proof of Stake space. We were really excited when the Everstake team reached out to us and shared their vision and plan of working on the RPC efficiency and decentralization and were happy to jump on board in order to contribute to tackling these issues.
By using Extrnode you can connect your dApp to a decentralized cluster of RPC nodes via the public load balancer. The RPC cluster includes 30+ Solana public RPC endpoints scannable via publicly available Solana’s JSON-RPC.
XPLA
The most recent network we joined as a Mainnet Validator is XPLA, a chain built on Tendermint with the goal of providing users extensive experiences of DeFi, Play to Own (P2O) gaming, and tools to increase the adoption of Web2 users that are looking into joining the Web3 space. The chain’s ecosystem is designed to publicize all service decisions and operations of the decentralized applications on the platform by enabling all users to be owners.
In addition to the above-mentioned networks that we joined as an infrastructure provider in 2022 either on Testnet or Mainnet, we continued providing infrastructure services for networks joined since the launch of our project back in 2019. Among those are Solana, Avalanche, The Graph, Harmony, Akash Network, KAVA, SKALE, Stafi, Regen Network, Desmos, BitSong and CertiK. Also in 2022 we unfortunately decided to discontinue our infrastructure provider services for Band Protocol.
2. Expansion — Providing Whitelabel Validator services in addition to the already existing RPC services
With the goal of expanding our services within the DLT space, in 2022 we started to actively provide Whitelabel Validator services to 3rd parties interested in joining the infrastructure space. This means that parties interested in running nodes on Proof of Stake blockchains externalize these operations to experienced and reliable teams that are in charge of the technical aspects of it. However, this is a rigorous selection process from our side in terms of the clients we accept to work with, the services being SLA based and exclusively non-custodial. Anyone interested in Whitelabel Validator services is kindly invited to reach out to our team for initial conversations at contact@chainode.tech.
The Whitelabel Validator services are an addition to the already existing RPC services that we started providing in 2021.
3. IRL Events
Following the restrictions of a pandemic, we were really happy to be able to finally join IRL blockchain focused events this year. The top 3 events that we attended were: The Modular Summit hosted in Amsterdam by Maven 11 and Celestia, Solana Breakpoint that took place in Lisbon in early November as well as the Staking Summit organized by the Staking Rewards team. While the market sentiment was not the most favorable, it was extremely exciting to see the amount of users, developers and builders attending these events and actively contributing to the expansion of the decentralized ecosystem. Part of the exciting events and announcements during the Solana Breakpoint were summarized in this thread.
4. Associations and Platforms
In other exciting terms, 2022 was also the year when we joined the Crypto Valley Association as a member — having our legal entity and team already registered in Zug — Switzerland and when we also became a Verified Provider on the Staking Rewards platform. The process of becoming a Verified Provider on Staking Rewards was a rigorous one, and we would like to salute their team for their efforts in cross-checking important aspects that a trusted Validator should provide, such as: security, reliability, team, slashing history, involvement in governance, etc. We are also happy to share that Chainode Tech was one of the 30 Staking Providers that took part in a survey used for creating a thorough & insightful report focused on the staking ecosystem. The full report can be found here.
5. Challenges. Opportunities. Throughs.
There is no denying the fact that 2022 was a tumultuous year for the decentralized space, to say the least. One aspect that received even more clarity this year is that we need decentralization. The vast majority of this year’s incidents that negatively impacted the whole ecosystem were due to centralized bad actors & projects. This should be food for thought for the next few years when considering who we support as well as which are our daily choices.
In addition, what we observed is the amount of misinformation or lack of real information when discussing various chains, architectures, teams, etc. If we want to understand the technology behind a project, we have to do our own research. If we want to understand decentralization, we have to do our own research. If we want to contribute to decentralization and support the spreading of the stake in a network to quality Validators, we have to do our own research. If we want to be critics of others, we have to do our own research. And if we want to be successful, we have to do this together. There is no denying that what hurts one project, hurts the entire ecosystem. Our hope is that more and more focus will be put on the in-depth understanding and education of the entire space, as being part of a decentralized ecosystem comes with an immense responsibility and is never static. We are happy and open to be the communication partners of anyone that is focused on quality, seriously interested in learning and building in the space.
Another thing that we expect to happen within the next year involves regulation, both due to the high investments & gains throughout 2021 as well as due to the fraud & bankruptcies tied to big names in the space that happened over the past year and led to immense financial losses for millions of users. Here it is going to be important that people, who are truly involved in the industry, step up and guide regulators in order to make sure that all the imposed rules will make sense and are suitable for the decentralized space. This ecosystem is very different to the traditional financial system, so it is extremely important to not just copy-paste rules and regulations that would be almost impossible to comply with or would significantly slow down the innovation & development.
Especially important here is to protect smaller players as well. There is a risk that bad regulation could only benefit bigger entities and therefore create monopols, making it harder for individuals and small entities to get involved. So if you hear any talks about regulation, either in your local communities, while visiting other places, online, etc. make your voice heard. Every individual opinion counts and who can better understand how the decentralized space works and what regulations would harm/benefit the ecosystem if not the ones that contributed to building it.
On a more positive note, there are many exciting things to look forward to in 2023 from a technical and infrastructure perspective: Jump Trading’s Firedancer — a new Validator client built to improve Solana’s performance (aiming to allow Solana to process over 1 million transactions per second), Celestia’s upcoming Testnet, Axelar Ecosystem’s $60M Startup Funding Program, Sui Mainnet Launch, support for ETH staking in combination with DVT solutions like SSV and Obol and extra services like Eigenlayer as well as general expansion of our supported PoS chains for staking and RPC/API services.
6. Stake with us / Partnerships
We are extremely focused on continuing to deliver top-tier staking services for the Proof of Stake Ecosystem and we are open to receive delegations on the numerous chains we support as infrastructure providers. Here are a few reasons why you should consider joining our crew:
- Web 3 Infrastructure provider registered & operating solely from Switzerland
- Staking Rewards Verified Provider
- Experienced & skilled team, covering areas like Solution Architecture, Software Integration, DevOpsSec, Linux, JS (Node.js, Angular, Vue), Python, AWS Cloud development, Design, Business Growth and last but not least blockchain with experience in designing and operating both private and public DLTs.
- No slashing history
- Fair fees
- Focus on transparency (we announce all & any changes that would potentially impact our delegators weeks in advance)
- Reliable infrastructure, including back-ups
- Reachable 24/7: t.me/ChainodeTech
Stake with us on Solana, Avalanche, The Graph, Harmony, Axelar Network, Akash, Agoric, KAVA, SKALE, Stafi, Regen Network, CertiK, BitSong or Desmos.
If you are interested in working together with us, please feel free to reach out at contact@chainode.tech and we’ll be happy to jump on a call and start a conversation.
