VoltPool a 0% Fee Pool

November Update

It has been a while since my last blog post. I wanted to give a few updates around pool status, a decrease of margin fees, and relevant Cardano news. But first, I wanted to share where we are at in furthering our data explorer, VoltSight.

NextGen Cardano Explorer: VoltSight

VoltSight is not the standard blockchain explorer you commonly see and use to check if your Ada was sent to the correct address or not. Instead, it is a big data analytics platform designed to correlate seemingly useless information on the blockchain into meaningful and insightful data.

Over the last several months, I have been tweaking, designing, and redesigning the backend UI of the Cardano explorer. There have been several software architecture iterations to solve the biggest challenge: What is the best way to represent the Cardano Database as a dataset?

I used the standard methods; DbSync with GraphQL, APIs, and Postgres queries, but then I started to look at the Cardano DB as a dataset and data pipelines. This way of thinking answered my problem on how to build the NexGen Cardano explorer. So now, I am building out a data pipeline with an infrastructure that allows machine learning, data engineering toolsets, and visualizations to be applied to the Cardano blockchain. Over the next few months through the holidays, I hope I will be able to provide more insight into VoltSight and a link to a web app for feedback.

Pool Status

As we stand now, VoltPool has over 30 million Ada staked from over 2000 delegators! Thank you for all making this happen. VoltPool values each delegator, large and small. It took the collective to make VoltPool a success, and understandably each delegator expects rewards from VoltPool. Therefore rest assured, VoltPool’s mission is not just building the NexGen data explorer; its primary mission is validating blocks on the Cardano blockchain. And VoltPool can’t validate blocks without delegators, so thank you. If you have any questions, need help, please feel free to email me at [email protected], and I will do my best to help you.

The performance of VoltPool has been around 99%. However, a few blocks have been “ghosted” or “stolen” from us. A ghosted block means propagation issues with the network, and the block producer node was not in sync to sign the block. A stolen block is when there have been two pools assigned to the same timeslot to sign the block, called a Slot Battle. Sadly, neither one of these situations are in a pool’s control. VoltPool has not missed a block for some time now. With almost 3,000 blocks being signed by VoltPool since inception and performance sitting at over 99%, we are doing fantastic and still ranked a top 100 pool in Daedalus and throughout the Cardano Ecosystem.

Decrease Margin Fees

Here at VoltPool, we have costs, but we are fortunate they are low enough that a variable fee of 0-1% + 340 Ada Fixed Fee can be applied to the pool.

VoltPool is pleased to announce lowering the margin fee to 0%! We understand times are rough, and while we do have ongoing development and server cost, we wanted to ensure you receive a little more during the Holidays. Because without the delegators, VoltPool wouldn’t have been a success.

Margin will eventually go back up to 1% because we are a 0-1% variable pool. But for now, we are lowering our fee to 0%. In the future, IOHK plans to remove the fixed fee and implement a different reward mechanism. However, the timeline has not been announced.

Cardano Updates

A lot is happening in Cardano. But some highlights are the following:

• Cardano Wallets hit an All-time high of over 2 million Ada
• Another ATH of over 23 billion ada has been staked out of the 32 billion ada in circulation
• Cardano’s development of Hydra is trucking along. The update will allow scalability and 1,000s of transactions a second.

If you have any questions, please reach out to me: [email protected].    
 
 
Validating Blocks faster than Lightening,

Drew