StakePooler is a Cardano and Likecoin stake pool I operated back in 2021.
A cryptocurrency stake pool is a group of validators that come together to increase their chances of verifying blocks and earning rewards. In Cardano, stake pool operators pool their funds together to create a pool of tokens that is used for block validation. The more stake a pool has, the more likely it is to be selected to validate transactions.
At that time, there were around 2,000 to 3,000 validators, and my goal was to become one of them. The challenge was to attract Cardano and Likecoin holders to delegate to my stake pool so that we could have a better chance of being selected as the validator. It wasn't easy. Aside from ensuring that the stake pool was running on secure and reliable infrastructure, I also needed to create an appealing website with convincing copy and easy-to-follow tutorials.
Although I stopped operating the pool after running it for about a year due to the unaffordable infrastructure cost of maintaining the stake pool, the whole process helped me understand blockchain better. It also paved the way for my subsequent web3 journey later on.
The website
The website stakepooler.com has already been decommissioned. There were lots of information regarding the stake pool and instructions on how to delegate.
The secure and robust architecture design
In addition to the producer node, which is a full node that is always ready to be the validator of the next block, there are two more relay nodes running to ensure the reliability and availability of the system. Furthermore, the private key is stored offline in an air-gapped encrypted storage device, ensuring the security of the entire system.
