What’s new from ZelLabs!

“Don’t you find it odd,” she continued, “that when you’re a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you’re older, somehow they act offended if you even try.”
― Ethan Hawke

The crew at ZelLabs whom I have had the pleasure of interviewing over the last couple of weeks get this to its full extent and they live the implied lesson from it.

Orthrus is one of the lesser-known entities from Greek mythology. What does that have to do with ZelLabs, they’re a mining pool, right?

No, Zel Labs is a lot more than just a mining pool, they have several aspects, to the point where two heads might not be sufficient, to be fair to them. The main other branch is a part of Zel’s business development branch with all the skunkworksy goodness that entails.

ZelLabs’ pool operation, what it’s about and who is involved:

CryptoWrench and JeffVader are the two operators on the poolside of ZelLabs, they both share a passion for crypto and complement each other exceedingly well in terms of skill sets and personality types.

CryptoWrench being the hard-hitting operator, who keeps the pool rolling along, whereas JeffVader is the more elegant rapier making adjustments to code as needed.

What’s driving such a pair?

From talking to both of them, it is clear they share a love of working on and with open-source tech and the impact it can have both in and outside of the crypto space. Combine that with a willingness to support solid proof of work projects as they develop, and you have a recipe for a winning team which reminds me somewhat of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

This manifests itself clearly when the conversation comes around to the topic of equihash mining and the issues associated with the initially very limited participation in equihash mining from many of the larger mining pools.

Examples of unscrupulous developers charging 5000 USD and up for implementing newer equihash protocols were mentioned several times. This is frankly absurd pricing for anything but the very largest size mining pools due to the frequently razor-thin margins they operate on.

Setting the bar for entry that high for mining pools leaves the space open to exploitation from centralized hash, as there will not be enough other options to change to. Adding to that making life miserable for many of the smaller pool operators who just like to support projects and frequently help drive growth and you have a recipe for an unhappy space.

To add to that, both of them thoroughly enjoy helping solid proof of work projects develop and they have spent considerable time and energy adding Zcoin and their MTP algorithm to the pool as well as providing a testnet pool for the Raptoreum project. Both projects use specialized proof of work algorithms requiring custom stratums for pooled mining.

So, what goodies does the poolside of ZelLabs have in store for us in 2020?

These are in no particular order, just a nice set of milestones for the coming year.

• An open-source release of equihash pool code using nomp.
• The open-source release of an MTP pool on nomp.
• The open-source release of pool code for a Ghostrider pool.
• Adding pool support for at least one or two other reputable proof of work projects.

Why should I care about pool code and open-source?

It’s frighteningly simple, decentralization. The more working open-source options are available to support not just crypto projects but any projects, the better!

“But, Superdupersecretsaucecoin is awesome, and the developers are so nice!” True, but if they are running on a single centralized pool, if something goes wrong prior to open-sourced solutions being available, there is a high likelihood of the entire project being hosed. Blockchains needing a restart are not pretty and do not lead to happy miners.

Any project with a single point of failure is a risk and more an issue of “when” rather than “if.” Working with cutting-bleeding edge tech there will always be things that need fixing along the way.

It feels great to see people joining the space and contributing in fairly old-school yet indispensable ways! This is a far cry from the “Wen moon? and Lambo plz!” that seem to have inundated the space post-2017. Having been in the space for a while, I find this extremely refreshing and reaffirming of there being hope!

On the skunkier side of things, we have a substantial part of Zel’s business development arm.

Business development, meaning exactly that, forging partnerships and collaboration with other compatible projects ensuring mutually beneficial relationships that can drive growth for ZelCore and the space in general going forward!

Who is in the driver’s seat on this moon-mission?

Most of the business development for ZelLabs is driven by Miles Manley and Daniel Keller. They bring a solid combination of skills to the table and make a well-balanced team.

Miles brings solid vision and design, which when combined with Daniel’s excellent people skills and business sense makes for an enticing combination to engage with.

Having had extensive conversations with both, I can say that they both bring honesty, a willingness to learn and keen analytics to the space which post-2017 has become extremely rare. There is none of the “Me high and mighty!” which inexorably leads to failure on an epic scale!

Why are they in crypto?

Miles got engaged with the space in 2017 and has been contributing since then. He has a love for all things decentralized and seems to take pride in running an engaging project that is contributing positively to the space.

To anyone out there who feels that he is too young or inexperienced to run anything let alone a multi-million dollar project. “You need to sit down and involve yourself in some community meetings to familiarize yourself with what is going on!”

Knowing when to listen is a skill most significantly older people have not mastered, meaning they do not facilitate teams working together in tune with the open-source ethos, they browbeat them into doing so.

Daniel has been in the space significantly longer getting his toes wet in 2012 and engaging to varying degrees between then and jumping on the Zel train. He brings excellent people and organizational skills from a competitive industry with an almost as fast pace.

On the business development side, they complement each other extremely well with the pair making up an effective whole, which is a recurring theme across the Zel project.

They have really gotten getting the right people together down to the artform it needs to be for creativity and effectiveness to go hand in hand.

Why do I need to know about business development and how Zel are looking at growing in the space?

It really boils down to a project’s methods of business development, making it completely transparent if a project is living up to its own ideals and goals.

Zel partnering with Proof Of Review goes very far in demonstrating their commitment to bolstering quality in the space. The same goes for Zel’s pool support for Zcoin and the Raptoreum project, two of the only projects in the space currently innovating extensively on proof of work. Other things are starting to come from those partnerships.

Projects not walking the walk tend to have rather disastrous outcomes and leave at least some of their participants feeling badly used. Looking at who a project works with and why they work with them is a clear indicator of where things are headed.

But NEO, come on, they aren’t any of the stuff you just talked about!

A, they are one of the larger players in the space. B, where has Zel ever said they will only work with proof of work projects?

Having their extensive range of assets integrated into ZelCore as well as the previously integrated Raven assets is a technological first in the multi-wallet space and an impressive achievement from a relatively young project.

NEO, GAS, and NEP-5 assets open up a potentially huge market for ZelCore and by extension Zel holders.

ONT, why on Earth is Zel working with something so outdated?

Ouch, you must have been listening to some of the more toxic maximalists from another couple of projects that both start with an E.

ONT Dapps are currently some of the most versatile in the space. Integrating them with ZelCore will in the longer run facilitate growth and expansion significantly more flexible than what a single project can produce. Think along the lines of wallet integrated leveled up versions of TornadoCash or other privacy-enhancing features enabling them for ZelCore users.

There really is a myriad of possibilities with tech this capable meaning that choosing a starting point and going from there can frequently be more of an issue than getting to the desired outcomes.

What can we expect from ZelLabs in terms of business development in 2020?

The very short answer is “The unexpected!”

If looking for more detail, I would expect new things coming from currently established partnerships with other projects. What could that be? Well, taking license to speculate wildly a few things I can think of are:

1. A possible implementation of the new Zcoin funded privacy protocol.
2. Support for a project that goes straight into the crypto top 100.
3. ONT Dapp support for privacy enhancing all Zel supported coins and assets.
4. Direct developer support for one or two newer projects as part of the “incubator” mission and vision.

I can also see ZelLabs getting somewhat more active on the crypto education side of things as that is one area for expansion that a lot of people could benefit from given the current less than pleasing global circumstances.

The one thing I am entirely certain of is that ZelLabs are going to develop additional partnerships with other projects based on the newly launched ZelFlux distributed network. This can range from running trusted electrum instances for other projects to wholly new areas for decentralized computing to decentralized (uncensorable) hosting of blueprints for medical equipment should the current global crisis continue.

What does all of this mean for me as a Zel miner or investor?

I like short answers, the short one, in this case, being: “They walk the walk!”

But I just care about “Wen moon?”

In that case, I would suggest selling your Zel, hopping on the latest BitShares clone and looking for the next pump and dump masternode coin. This is a longer-term project with multiple real use cases deployed and in action, not a two-bit scam needing you to “fund” development.

For those of us who can look a bit further than the next paycheck, I would consider Zel to be one of the very few newer crypto projects that is keeping true to the decentralized ethos laid down by Satoshi Nakamoto. That ethos has been taken to heart and is being applied to all the aspects of the project that I am aware of.

Should I run out and buy all the BAMF nodes?

Well, it depends on your risk profile for investments and available capital. My personal portfolio holds a to me significant chunk of Zel which to other players in the space is pocket change.

What you should do before even considering buying or mining, is join the Discord and Telegram groups, check out the community, confirm for yourself that what I have written up here and other team communication is EXACTLY what is going on.

Once you have confirmed that and reached a decision on what you can afford to invest for how long, then you can start thinking about buying or adding extra mining equipment.

On behalf of the Zel Team,

Bigpiggy01