# Validator Introduction - Alchemist Stake **URL:** \ **Category:** Validators\ **Created:** [June 19, 2023, 12:20pm UTC](https://dydx.forum/t/validator-introduction-alchemist-stake/463 "2023-06-19T12:20:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AlchemistStake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8edcca/32.png) [@AlchemistStake](https://dydx.forum/u/AlchemistStake)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 12:20pm UTC](https://dydx.forum/t/validator-introduction-alchemist-stake/463/1 "2023-06-19T12:20:44Z")
**Entity Information and location:** Alchemist Stake, Romania **Infrastructure location:** Tier 3 Datacenter (usually M247) Located in Romania, Austria, Germany, France and Netherlands (mainly Europe) **Hardware:** Baremetal servers in Romania, Austria, Germany, France and Netherlands (mainly Europe) **Technical make-up of team (elaborate on no. of dev ops engineers, experience, etc.):** 4 engineers (that worked as pentesters and incident responders) **Years of experience:** 3 years (since 2020) What other networks are you running validators for? Agoric, Humans.ai, Bware Labs and MultiversX **Based on your participation in any previous testnets, mainnets, are there any best practices to be aware of? What are some things that made previous testnets, mainnet launches successful and/or things to avoid that have gone poorly?** Communication: - Dedicated Telegram groups with validator teams in order to assure responsiveness; - Dedicated Discord channels for the testnet chat only; - Clear timeline for each phase of the incentivized testnet and always allow - Using a task submission portal which is easy to evaluate tasks in (like Knack); - Dedicated Telegram/Discord channel to announce testnet/mainnet upgrades; Testnet validator best practices: - Making sure validators don’t have auto-compound enabled in a testnet environment / not enabling inflation unless it is for specific tests only during testnets; - Making sure validators use correct genesis file for each testnet phase (e.g. check SHA256 hash for that specific file) - Use UTC instead of GMT (as it can cause confusion if you are dealing with validator from all around the globe) - A good timeframe for upgrades, genesis events and all other events that need all participants attention would be 17:00 UTC **Do you have a validator voting framework and process?** - We participate in discussions on Commonwealth and we post a review on Keplr validator dashboard for the community to see what influenced our decision. In case there is a more sensitive governance proposal, we discuss on our Telegram group with the community before. **Are you planning to play any additional roles in the dYdX ecosystem (e.g. market maker, trader, indexer, front-end, other)?** We plan to run IBC-relayers, RPC nodes and indexers as needed. **Are there other products or services you want to highlight that could be relevant for dYdX?** Social Trading as an interesting feature we’d like to see on dYdX. **Any notable contributions in other ecosystems that you would like to highlight for the community?** We have coordinated the Humans.ai Friction Incentivized testnet: ``` Over 50 validator teams over 3 Phases before the mainnet launch; Configured Knack submission portal for validators; Maintaince Discord/Telegram communication with validators to assure a smooth cooperation; Designed testnet tasks along with Humans.ai team; Prepare mainnet genesis ```