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Meet the SKALE Network Validators
Phase 2 Mainnet Partners
Ebru Engwall, Director of Solutions Engineering
The SKALE Network is fortunate to have an extremely strong set of validators. These validators range from experienced network operations teams to experienced crypto miners to experienced ETH developers, with all combinations in between. Many of the initial SKALE validators will also support ETH2.
SKALE had nearly 700 requests from validator teams all over the world, and we are tremendously grateful for the support. On October 1, 2020 the network is launching with validators that were selected and approved for Mainnet Phase 2. We are looking forward to opening up access to a larger set of validators in Q1-Q2 of 2021 and to scaling Ethereum together.
In this article we asked approved SKALE Mainnet Phase 2 validators to introduce themselves to the SKL token holders and future delegators.
Top networks, years of experience, high reliability, global distribution
SKALE's validators have experience mining and validating for a number of Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) networks including ETH2, Cosmos, Terra, Solana, Polkadot & Kusama, Near, Celo, and many more. They are well-versed in network operations and in understanding the importance of reliability and uptime in support of a decentralized network. This includes years of experience with complex infrastructure setup and orchestration, as well as a solid history with Ethereum and EVMs. Combined, SKALE's validators have operations located across the globe including in the US, Canada, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, India, Germany, Ireland, Finland, Romania, and more.
Experience from the SKALE Testnet
In addition to their general experience as miners and validators, their participation in the SKALE Testnet earlier this year gave them deep knowledge of the SKALE Network itself. The incentivized Testnet ran several months and worked to get validators familiar with the setup and operation of nodes and subnodes accepting delegation, and serving as validators for SKALE Chains. SKALE's Testnet ran non-stop from May until late August in an accelerated mode, working through an equivalent of more that 70 years of network life without crashing even once.
SKALE's Testnet served to familiarize validators with the concepts of random node selection and frequent node rotation, which are key characteristics of the SKALE Network and fundamental aspects of its security model. Validators also gained familiarity and comfort with the containerization and virtualization innovations that push SKALE’s architecture a generation ahead of other networks.
For additional information, please read The SKALE Network: Why Randomness, Rotation, and Incentives are Critical for Secure Scaling and Containerization & The Future of Decentralized Infrastructure.
Summary
It was impressive to see the level of effort and initiative we saw from the validators during the Testnet and in the launch of the SKALE Mainnet. With this, the SKALE core team gained incredibly confidence in the collective set's ability to perform their duties to the highest degree to help expand the network, further the growth of affordable transactions, and bring about the decentralized revolution we have all been working so hard to achieve.
SKALE Delegator Hub
The SKALE Delegator Hub is live and contains information on all Proof of Use deadlines, important links, delegator resources, and FAQs. Please review it as it will save you time and make it easy to go through the Proof of Use process.
SKALE Network Validators for MainNet Phase 2
Here are the validators that are integrated with SKALE and available to public token launch participants via the Activate platform beginning September 24, 2020:
- 01NODE
- Audit One
- Blockdaemon
- Blockware
- Chainflow
- Chorus One
- Cypher Core
- Dokia Capital
- Figment
- FreshSkale
- Staked
- Stakin
- Stake With Us
- WolfEdge Capital
SKALE Validators available on Hubble and Anthem later this year (not available on Activate for the Mainnet Phase 2 launch):
NOTE: When considering a validator, please do your own research and diligence. Validators operate their own businesses and are directly responsible to delegators for performance of obligations and duties.
🔥🔥🔥 SKALE Network Validators 🔥🔥🔥
The information below is self-reported by each validator.
The number of nodes, uptime, and amount staked are across all networks supported by the validator.
Available on Activate beginning September 24, 2020 👇👇👇
01node
About Us
As a current validator on many major PoS networks, 01node has the expertise and time tested infrastructure to be a highly secure and reliable node operator on the SKALE Network. Our existing validator nodes have secured value on several POS networks such as Cosmos, Iris, Terra, Kava, E-money, IOV, Solana, Secret Network, Chainlink and others who will soon launch like theGraph and Near Protocol.
Advantages
- Expertise
- Alignment
- Security
- Reliable
Infrastructure
Bare metal servers, equipped with latest EPYC processors, boosted by Intel enterprise NVMs paired with Intel SGX servers.
Ankr
About Us
The Ankr protocol marketplace allows easy access to an array of blockchains and provides users with the ability to deploy staking nodes as well as developer nodes in minutes. Our team is formed by experienced professionals from AWS, Oracle, Morgan Stanley, BitGo, Ethereum and more!
Advantages
- Validator and developer node support for 50+ blockchains
- API Support for 4 protocols
- Platform ease-of-use
- 40+ member team with a strong focus on technical security, reliability and scalability
Infrastructure
We don't share this for privacy and security purposes.
AUDIT.one
About Us
AUDIT.one was started with the idea that the Validators of today will be the Auditors of tomorrow with access to real-time data and skin in the game, unlike the auditors of today. We have been running validators for various projects right from the very start of the Delegated Proof-of-Stake ecosystem (with Cosmos).
We have previously been rewarded for being a winner in the never jailed category of the Game of Stakes (Cosmos' first incentivized testnet). Most recently, we won a liveness reward in Cosmos' Game of Zones. We are one of the earliest DPoS ecosystem participants and our experience is what truly makes us a trustworthy Validator.
Advantages
- Fully decentralized infrastructure
- State-of-the-art Security
- We provide networks with greater geographical decentralization by running our operations from India (Only major validators in this space working out of India)
Infrastructure
We make use of the following components and tooling:
- Proxmox
- Opnsense
- Ansible and Terraform
- Docker
- Wireguard mesh networking
- Prometheus & Graphana
Additional Thoughts
AUDIT.one is the staking arm of Persistence One. Persistence is a Protocol Powering Institutional Decentralized Finance by bridging DeFi and Traditional Finance. At Persistence, since the transactions that are validated are high value real world banking transactions, we only work with the best of the best Validators in the dPoS space. We have a fixed set of requirements and criterions for these validators.
At AUDIT.one we ensure that we ourselves meet these high standards. We have been running enterprise grade infrastructure for all our Validator nodes.
Blockdaemon
About Us
Blockdaemon is the most battle-tested node provider for 20+ PoS protocols, allowing for an easy way to get competitive yields on your staking investments while minimizing risk. Blockdaemon is internally ISO 27001 compliant, with enterprise-grade security and backup systems and is used by leading exchanges, custodians, enterprises, financial institutions and 10k+ developers to connect commercial stakeholders to blockchains.
Advantages
- Blockdaemon monitors and maintains all nodes to drive maximum yield with 99.9% SLA for all of our supported protocols
- With the experience of running nodes for 20+ PoS networks, Blockdaemon has put in place 24/7 monitoring of machine and protocol metrics to avoid downtime-related slashing
- Protocol-specific failover strategies have been crafted to eliminate risk of double-signing, with hot-spare and fully-synced backup nodes exist for fast recoveries when needed
- Direct access to live customer support, knowledge-base and community resources
Infrastructure
We provide a variety of options to deploy nodes for our customers. Launch your nodes on-premise or with any cloud providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Digital Ocean. SKALE specifically will be hosted on dedicated servers.
Additional Thoughts
When these protocols go to mainnet, we will also support: CODA, Filecoin, Flow, NEAR, Serum, Solana, Anchor, Blockstack, Dfinity, Ethereum 2.0, The Graph, NuCypher.
Supporting 30+ protocols including PoS, PoW, and more with 70 out-of-the-box node types, and monitoring plug-ins for cloud and on-premises services, Blockdaemon’s mission is to simplify the process of deploying nodes and creating scalable enterprise blockchain solutions via APIs, BYOI, auto-decentralization and auto-healing of nodes.
As part of our commitment to the networks we support, we take the time to evaluate what is best for the protocol and ensure we have active participation in voting and consensus. All node runners have a significant part in the future development of a network and its broader purpose so understanding the needs of the community at large and having an active voice is of utmost importance to us.
Blockware
About Us
Blockware provides hardware procurement, mining rig colocation, professional mining, and staking pool operations. We offer access to an extensive network of commercial data center facilities across North America who specialize in hosting and co-location services for cryptocurrency mining hardware; providing guaranteed up-time and 24/7 monitoring by experienced IT personnel.
Advantages
- Early investors in SKALE through Blockchain Opportunity Fund
- Alpine team member (we have been working with SKALE on testnets for over a year)
- Agile and experienced DevOps
Infrastructure
At Blockware we utilize bare metal servers for our delegation services, delivering improved performance, use of GPUs, as well as enterprise-grade SSDs and block storage. No virtualization or neighbours in our stack.
Additional Thoughts
At Blockware we only participate in networks that we believe and have invested in. Significant resources have been dedicated to working with the SKALE Networks team over the last 18 months, and we believe they have the right solution at the right time to propel the dApp ecosystem into one that can compete with incumbent platforms. See you at the summit.
Chainflow
About Us
Chainflow's a small and independent validator operator. Chainflow's founder, Chris Remus, has over 20+ years of experience designing and operating mission critical telecom, data center and IT infrastructure. Chris has been validating since being one of the first few members to join the Cosmos Validator Working Group in October of 2017.
Advantages
- Fair and equitable staking for everyone
- Secure and highly available infrastructure
- Personalized service that a smaller operator is uniquely positioned to provide
- Supports decentralization by supporting a smaller, yet very capable and dedicated, validator operator
Infrastructure
We operate dedicated servers on cloud infrastructure, supported by customized monitoring, alerting and backup systems. We diversify across cloud providers and geographic locations to reduce single points of failure.
We don't use any of the "Big 3" providers, i.e. AWS, GCP and Azure, as we feel that too much decentralized hardware is already supported by these providers, creating multiple centralization risks.
Additional Thoughts
We also advocate for the other smaller validator operators through Staking Defense (Forum, Podcast, Telegram Group). We feel that the survival of smaller operators is critical to keeping staking decentralized. Because if all we’re doing is re-creating the current centralized financial system, well, then what’s the point? Delegating to us supports these efforts.
Cypher Core
About Us
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Cypher Core was founded in 2017 by a collective of professionals with a shared passion to expose and deliver infallible opportunities for investors and consumers alike. The initiative has since evolved into an industry-leading staking service provider, working closely with several outstanding projects in scaling educational awareness while delivering a plethora of insight to communities across the world.
Through trust in our service quality, we've had the privilege to provide projects with first-rate infrastructure support and reliable staking services to serve the broader communities.
Advantages
- Consistency – In a distributed Proof-of-Stake system where network partitions are inevitable, we prioritize consistency over availability due to the harsher penalty for inconsistency than unavailability.
- Reliability – We believe the basis of reliability is simplicity. Complication often ends up being over-promising and under-performing. What’s a good system if you can’t sufficiently maintain it?
- Resilience – Security cannot be guaranteed but resilience can. We fully adapt the “Prevention, Detection and Response” approach standardized in the Information Security industry to mitigate risks.
- Monitoring – We collect a wide range of metrics including metrics exposed by the consensus protocol. Our ultimate goal is to develop one integrated tooling that combines metrics , monitoring and alerting.
Infrastructure
We host dedicated servers in multiple Certified TIA-942 Tier 3 datacenters. Some quick specs:
- Standard – Certified TIA-942 Tier 3 or higher
- Power Circuits – Two circuits with UPS + generator backup
- Bandwidth – 100 Mbps within national access, 10 Mbps bandwidth international access
- 1GbE transit fibers (LAG)
- Juniper EX transit switches
- Juniper EX core switches
- Juniper SRX firewalls in HA "Chassis Cluster"
- APC switched rack PDU
- Electrical circuits with UPS + generator backup
Dokia Capital
About Us
Dokia Capital is one of the biggest professional validators in the blockchain space. We operate an enterprise-grade infrastructure, fit for institutional staking, and ensure the security and stability of the networks that we join.
We’re very careful and deliberate about the projects that we support because our commitment to their success goes past the responsibilities of a validator.
Advantages
Highly available infrastructure split between multiple datacenters.
Infrastructure
Baremetal servers – Dell PowerEdge
Figment
About Us
With 30+ years of experience, Figment is Canada’s largest blockchain infrastructure and software provider. Our mission is to make it simple for token holders and developers to use, build and govern blockchains by providing a comprehensive set of tools and services including our enterprise-grade staking infrastructure, the Hubble Web 3 explorer and DataHub developer APIs.
Advantages
- Trusted by large institutional token holders from around the world
- Actively participate in network governance/community initiatives for protocols we support
- 30+ years of real world experience operating critical Internet infrastructure
- Protected via industry-leading Delegation Agreement
Infrastructure
The most secure and reliable Web 3 infrastructure, built from the ground up to maximize security and minimize risk:
- Validator nodes hosted in a Tier IV IDC with 2N power and cooling, advanced climate control, redundant fibre, A+B power/network paths and biometric access control
- Sentry nodes hosted in North America, Europe and Asia across 5 public cloud providers, connected to IDC via redundant direct connections and VPN links
- Private peering interconnection with other trusted validators
- Hardware Security Modules (HSM) to secure private keys and prevent double sign faults
- Multi on-premise and off-premise secure server backup and redundancy
- 24/7 on call dev-ops team with internal and external monitoring & alerting
FreshSKALE
About Us
Our team has been maintaining secure and stable servers since 1997, started investing in cryptoassets in 2013 and started operating validator services in 2018, with Tezos.
Advantages
- We run a mix of bare-metal (our own hardware) in Tier 3 datacenters and on multiple cloud platforms across 3 continents.
- We use hardware wallets and hardware security modules wherever possible.
- We prioritize security, infrastructure and performance. We let our numbers speak for themselves instead of relying on a large marketing budget.
- Compared to our peers/other top validators, we have a smaller burn rate, and thus we can offer top tier service for a smaller commission fee. This frees us from having to seek additional revenue streams: we only do one thing, we do it extremely well and we are committed to Staking as a Service.
Infrastructure
Our SKALE servers run on the MS Azure cloud, with redundant availability zones, load balancing and protected virtual network.
Staked
About Us
Staked operates highly reliable and secure staking infrastructure for 30+ PoS protocols on behalf of the leading crypto asset investors in the industry.
Advantages
- Trusted staking provider for industry leaders, including 40 of the top 50 crypto funds
- Staked uptime guarantee
- Exportable reporting for rewards
- 24/7 Support
Infrastructure
- Reliable and Secure: We use Kubernetes to distribute across multiple cloud providers, and have never been slashed, hacked, or experienced extended downtime in 2+ years of operation.
- Non-Custodial: You are in complete control of your private keys and funds throughout the staking process.
- Broad Asset Coverage: Live on 30+ PoS mainnets including Skale, Tezos, Cosmos, Decred, Terra and Livepeer, Polkadot, Cardano, Keep, NuCypher, Solana and NEAR.
- Block-Level Reporting: Designed for funds admins and accountants, the reporting includes all staking and delegation transactions on a calendar basis.
Learn more about our technology infrastructure here.
StakeWithUs
About Us
Stakewith.us provides se
cured yield solutions for crypto asset investors. It was founded in February 2019 to meet growing demand across leading Proof-of-Stake protocols. It has since secured more than $30m USD in assets under its secure validation infrastructure for global clients, with over 15 projects across mainnets and testnets.
Advantages
- We are the only staking infrastructure provider to be backed by a governmental entity (SGInnovate).
- We have a good track record since the beginning of our operations in February 2019 (no double signing and >99% availability).
- We provide bespoke institutional staking solutions customized to your needs.
- We are the backers of unagii.com, a retail, non-custodial yielding platform that is free for use by anyone.
Infrastructure
We utilize an active-passive setup for all validation nodes which vastly reduces the chance of double signing. Validation nodes are housed on-premise at two Tier 3 Datacenters (Equinix and ST Telemedia) situated in Singapore.
Public sentries are deployed on AWS and GCP across multiple regions (US, EU and SEA) and availability zones for redundancy purposes. Our 24/7 monitoring system ensures that issues are identified and rectified in a timely manner.
The Yubi2HSM is utilized whenever possible, with a strict internal policy to securely generate roles and set capabilities. All secrets are multi-sigged with backups stored in bank vaults. A pictorial copy of our setup can be found on our website
Additional Thoughts
Skale is a promising Layer 2 solution suited to solve Ethereum's current gas issues. We are excited to be bootstrapping the network from genesis.
Stakin
About Us
Stakin is a devoted validation service provider for Proof-of-Stake blockchain networks. With our products, token holders can earn interests on their holdings and shape the future of the networks in which they believe.
Our talented team has a strong track record of outstanding execution in Network Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Finance. The company launched 2 years ago as an early staking service provider and has grown to $10m+ in Assets under Delegation, 4,000+ delegators, and a presence across 10+ networks.
Advantages
- Secure infrastructure
- Skin in the game
- Delegator support
Infrastructure
Hybrid colocation / cloud infrastructure
WolfEdge Capital
About Us
We have been very passionate about proof of stake networks since the beginning and have supported a lot of networks since the initial stages. We are running validator nodes on a variety of top tier blockchain networks for more than 1.5 years now with a very efficient infrastructure. We are probably the only validator in India to support so many networks.
Advantages
- Very secure and highly reliable infrastructure
- Experience of running the nodes for a long time
- Have good support from Indian community
Infrastructure
We primarily use Google Cloud, AWS, IBM Cloud, for running the validator nodes and custom monitoring systems for efficient functioning of the nodes.
Validators available on Hubble and Anthem later this year 👇👇👇
(not available on Activate for Mainnet Phase 2 launch on Oct 1, 2020)
Anonstake
About Us
Anonstake provides public delegation services to token holders. We are a mix of young and experienced team members, passionate about blockchain. We deeply care about decentralization as it represents a key ingredient for any successful blockchain. Our goal is to support adoption and decentralization in all projects we are represent.
Advantages
- Security with continuous monitoring and hardware protection
- Reliability with 99.9% availability in European data centers
- Professional with know-how and hardware capabilities to ensure and design highly available network infrastructure
- Passion for decentralization by being an independent community run validator node operator
Infrastructure
We operate several high-performance servers with low latency, high bandwidth connection, with 99.9% availability (with Tier3 Certified TIA-942 Datacenter) and enterprise-grade protection (against (Layer 3 and 4 DDoS) attacks) in data centers in different locations. We run multiple validator nodes with the same signer key in order to mitigate risk associated with key management. Key procedures include continuous monitoring with alerting, regular updates and additional key management with hardware protection (YubiHSM and Ledger hardware).
Additional Thoughts
We are really excited by all the work done by the team to release the SKALE Network! We are proud to be a part of this success story and will do our best to help the network evolve into its full potential.
Chainode Tech
About Us
Founded in early 2019, Chainode Tech is a young, extremely motivated and experienced team based in Zug, Switzerland, that is focused on providing staking and validator services on cutting edge Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) protocols. The team aims to contribute to decentralization through innovation, security and visionary technology.
Advantages
- Highly technical
- Adaptable - learning on the go
- Solution/action oriented
- Global mindset
Infrastructure
We are using different cloud services from bare metal servers to VPS for our infrastructure from multiple cloud providers such as AWS, Vultr, Digital Ocean, Contabo, OVH, and Scaleway. We work hard to verify beforehand that we do not contract with the same provider that is used by the majority of validators within a network in order to increase the security of that network.
Also, when selecting a cloud provider, it is important that it maintains a certain degree of quality, security, protection against DDOS, responsiveness, and support. We prefer to work closer with our cloud providers as we see them directly as professional partners specialized in their operational field, which help us in our mission by providing us with redundancy for power, internet, protection against 99% of DDoS attacks (tested) as well as with a fast and direct support line. We are working to expand our infrastructure by using colocation and hybrid approaches.
For securing and hardening a validator we use HSM modules with 2FA in order to access our validator machines. We are using Yubikey 5Ci with multiple backups. Details can be found here. In addition, we limit ports and restrict RPC communication to only specific, trusted services.
For monitoring and alerting we make use of various tools depending on the network:
- Grafana and Prometheus for monitoring the validator state as well as the validator hardware.
- Custom monitoring scripts for checking the signing behavior of our validator and sending automated alerts.
- A custom Staking Manager tool which alerts validators and stakers in real-time if a validator is changing its parameters.Uptime Robot for tracking the availability of our infrastructure
Additional Thoughts
We are really excited to have joined SKALE Network in this pivotal stage of development, and our team looks forward to support the project with a long term focus. For us, the goal will always be providing professional grade validator services, contributing to the adoption of SKALE and playing a main role in safeguarding decentralization.
Hashed x DELIGHT
About Us
With a strategic presence in South Korea and San Francisco, Hashed stands at the forefront of decentralized network development. Led by entrepreneurs and engineers, we aim to expedite the global adoption of the protocol economy through value participation, community building, and industry acumen. By directly contributing to networks, hosting educational events, and providing technical consultation, we strive for excellence in cultivating success for everyone in our network.
DELIGHT is a very secure and reliable validator team operated by blockchain core project experienced engineers. As our team was organized from a blockchain core development project, we know what & why holders are worried about and how to solve it. We are currently participating in some mainnet projects such as ICON, NEAR, ORBS, Terra, and so on.
Advantages
- The fastest testnet climber. We follow fast, we inform fast and delegators will receive plentiful bounties.
- We run a SSL-protected node key store server separately to be more secure.
- We operate in a virtual network in multiple regions, which achieves high availability.
- We not only invest in infrastructure, but know how to operate in efficient ways. “Efficient” means a bigger return to delegators.
Infrastructure
Our SKALE servers run on the MS Azure cloud. Nodes are spread across several regions for high availability.
Additional Thoughts
We've really enjoyed working with the SKALE team since the testnet days and thrilled to be a part of the initial set of validators on SKALE.
Hashquark
About Us
HashQuark provides the most secure, stable and convenient enterprise-level staking services. We have completed the global server deployment and all mainstream Proof of Stake blockchains are supported. HashQuark will be your best choice to participate in the Staking ecosystem.
Our team is experienced in the blockchain industry and we have 20+ members on the team. We've entered into partnerships with the world’s leading crypto wallets and exchanges, offering staking services to token holders and institutional investors in a secure and stable way.
Advantages
- Provides the most secure, stable and convenient enterprise-level staking services
- No technology background required
- Reliable automated watching
- Professional customer support
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