Voltairera A Financial Disruptor Vol.1

Welcome! This monthly newsletter, The Pulse, highlights what has been happening within Cardano and Voltairera. This month, as The Pulse’s very first edition, I want to express how Voltairera came to be and our initiatives.

Within the Cardano roadmap, Voltaire is the final phase that enables self-sustainment of the blockchain; it is the era of self-governance. Voltairera is an extension beyond Voltaire that builds Distributed Applications (DApps) within the Cardano Ecosystem. These projects are called Volt Initiatives. A Volt Initiative at its infancy can be viewed as Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIP), while at maturity are DApps or Volt Applications (VApps).

As a stake pool, VoltPool’s primary goal is to validate and produce blocks. By doing so, VoltPool ultimately grows the ecosystem but in parallel Voltairera is educating, publishing CIPs, and designing VApps to disrupt the financial world. Even if VoltPool isn’t the largest pool, Voltairera technology will be a disruptor.

VoltPool is the just the beginning. It is Voltairera’s first phase of growing and building within the Cardano Ecosystem. In order to build, one must understand the landscape. As VoltPool matures and the Cardano landscape is sown, Voltairera will be publishing and proposing improvements of the Cardano network i.e CIPs.

Publishing pool Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and the inner workings of Cardano is a prime initiative of Voltairera. Once Cardano matures, the landscape has been tilled, the seeds have grown, it is time to harvest. Voltairera has been there since the beginning, tilling the landscape and understanding the ecosystem. It is time to build VApps. It is the era of Voltairera, the disruptor of the financial world.

Voltairera’s first month of tilling is over, but the season has just begun. While a lot has happened with Cardano this month, Voltairera wouldn’t be where it is today without its Delegators and believing in VoltPool. Voltairera Thanks you.

Cardano Updates

Shelley:

  • The first rewards of Cardano were distributed from Epochs 209-212. Rewards earned in a Epoch are distributed in (2) epochs or 10 days. For example, the rewards the delegator earned in Epoch 211, would be distributed at the beginning of 214
  • Shelley upgrade from 1.18.0 to 1.19.0 with major performance enhancements for the pools
  • IOHK started a new monthly development series on Youtube
  • Charles discussed increasing K to a 1000 lowering the saturation point for pools and increasing a chance for small pools to succeed

Deadalus:

  • Upgraded from 2.1.0 to 2.2.0 - Here is the change log
  • The ranking system does not count for over saturation and is not representative towards a pool’s performance

VoltPool Updates

Rewards:

  • VoltPool produced 14 blocks from 209-*214 at the time of this publication
  • We have a current Return on Stake (ROS) of 5.81% for our delegators
  • We have produced almost 17,700 ADA for our delegators as of Epoch 213
  • Pool Size: ~21.7 mil or 10%. This leaves VoltPool in a prime position to provide continuous maximum awards to our Delegators in the long run when k is increased.
  • Rewards are still variable due to k being low and d=.76 meaning only 24% blocks are produced by stakepools

Improvements:

  • Upgraded all relays and the block producer to 1.19.0 with a few seconds of downtime with the bp node
  • Enhanced security and monitoring across the (4) relays and block producer
  • Standard Operating Procedures where updated
  • The community stood up a nonofficial organization called Stakepool Operator Collective Representation Assembly (SPOCRA) and VoltPool became a member. The assembly goal is to start a formal foundation of stake pools that have direct lines of communication with IOG and the Cardnao Foundation.

Issues:

  • There was an upgrade issue from 18.0.0 to 18.2.0 and pools that upgraded had to revert back to 18.0.0 in Epoch 209. VoltPool was not affected due to a policy we have in place for any new releases: An upgrade shall be performed after reading the change log, verifying if it is necessary to upgrade, and waiting a few days after the initial release for feedback.

Community:

  • A Github page is being created to provide education of Cardano, Stake Pool SOPs, and Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs) to the community
  • Ideas are being floated around on CIPs and vAPPs
  • Work on db-sync and PostgreSQL is in progress