Know Your Validator: High Stakes

Since Fetch.ai is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain network, the essential task of maintaining the whole system and guaranteeing its security is entrusted into the “hands” of its validators. Additionally, validators are trusted with delegations by FET stakers of all sizes, which practically translates into increasing their voting power and, by extension, their influence over the network. Consequently, they become the keepers of the fragile balance between accumulating power while also, for the health of the chain, striving to make it as decentralized as possible.

Unfortunately, these custodians of the protocol are usually shrouded in secrecy, and users often find it challenging to make an informed choice of whom to delegate their funds. In an attempt to remedy that and to create a space for Fetch validators to talk directly with our community, we initiated the Know Your Validator campaign.

Now, almost two years later, we are boosting transparency even further. We are launching a series of blog posts, each dedicated to one of our validating partners, so as to help you know them better.

Five pieces from the series have already been published — check out our interviews with Blockscope.net, Posthuman.Digital, Staking Land, Stakewolle, and Antrix.

Below is the sixth one featuring the High Stakes team. Enjoy!

Q: In a couple of sentences, introduce yourself and/or your organization and tell us where you are based.

High Stakes: A Swiss-registered company based out of Geneva, we have been validating multiple Cosmos blockchains for nearly 2 years, starting with Terra and gradually expanding to other projects that we found interesting.

We are currently 2 main members, Thomas and Joël, with multiple and complementary skills and experiences (IT development, system administration, business development, finance…) and we are working hard to become a renowned name in the industry.

A few external contributors assist us occasionally, for example with specific development tasks, strategic advice, or administrative matters.

Q: What got you into the Web3/crypto space, and how long have you been in it?

High Stakes: We have been dealing with cryptocurrencies for several years at a personal level, but really became involved when the Cosmos ecosystem appeared — the main issue we have with PoW chains is the staggering energy consumption, and PoS chains appeared to be a solution to this critical matter from our standpoint.

Then, the seemingly unlimited number of fascinating projects and opportunities convinced us to dive deep into the industry and make it our job.

Q: Tell us your story about how and when you became a validator on the Fetch.ai Network. How did you first hear about Fetch.ai?

High Stakes: We had been following Fetch for a while, and finally started a validator somewhere in Q3 2021. Having had a short training in data science, I’m always very interested in projects that leverage machine learning and AI technologies. The project behind the network is quite clever, and we wanted to support it by bringing our technical expertise to the table. In addition, as a Python developer, I am a die-hard fan of the Cosmpy package that is developed by the Fetch team.

Q: Have you participated in Fetch testnets?

High Stakes: No, we joined after the mainnet was launched.

Q: What commission do you offer FET holders as a delegation incentive?

High Stakes: We typically apply a 5% commission, which is normally enough to at least cover our infrastructure costs.

In addition, we are currently developing an incentive program — the “IBEX” project, that will allow our delegators to earn loyalty points and redeem them against $ATOM. We aim for a launch in March or April 2023.

Q: Have you participated in governance discussions and voted on any of the governance proposals?

High Stakes: We always vote on all proposals. Sometimes, when a decision isn’t easy to make, we participate in governance discussions and take the time to weigh every argument before making a choice that we believe is aligned both with the network and the stakers’ interests.

Q: Are you running (or are you planning to run) any ecosystem features such as seed nodes, client RPC endpoints, block explorers, or a dApp?

High Stakes: We currently provide a couple of services to Fetch: very small daily quicksync snapshots for feSygnum Bankllow validators to bootstrap a node or reset their data and save on storage costs, as well as a geolocation tool showing the distribution of nodes around the world.

Q: Please describe your involvement as a validator or in any other development work in the overall Web3 ecosystem.

High Stakes: Despite our small size, we endeavor to be an active member in the communities of the networks we validate and to provide technical support to fellow validators. For instance, Joël has been an official technical moderator in the Terra discord, prior to the crash, assisting the teams whenever necessary (setting up IBC relayers, running tests, updating configs, and making sure that all upgrades are applied on due time).

Q: Share your parting thoughts. Which is your favorite DApp and why?

High Stakes: That’s a difficult question. We love and use multiple DApps that have their specific use cases, such as Terra’s Mirror Protocol and astroport.fi, Injective DEX, The Graph, Kado, Osmosis obviously…

Q: What are your plans for the coming 5 years?

High Stakes: We registered the company in February 2022 with a main project in mind, that we had to postpone following the Terra crash — which hit us rather hard.

At this time, we are consolidating our business and working to ensure that we will go through this bear market, before resuming our initial roadmap. We expect that the IBEX program will grow our community and allow us to acquire the financial stability necessary to focus again on this initial objective.

Q: Is there something you would like to share with our community?

High Stakes: While we are a rather discrete team, working in the background and with minimal appearances on social networks, we have a strong expertise in our domain which we leveraged to set up a very solid infrastructure and monitoring solutions. As far as validators go, we believe that we are an important part of the network, and we are here to stay.

Q: How can our community members reach out and contact you? Please share your website and/or social media profiles.

High Stakes: We always make time for people who wish to speak to us, be it by email, website, or social media: Discord, Telegram, Twitter.