Entity Name and Location:
DragonStake, Spain
Infrastructure Location:
Primarily in Spain
What kind of hardware do you run? Baremetal, cloud-based…? In what geographic regions?
We operate baremetal servers, primarily using KVM-libvirt to manage our Virtual Machines on these servers. We operate our nodes in Europe, Asia, North and South America.
Technical Make-up of Team (elaborate on no. of dev ops engineers, experience, etc.):
Our team consists of five members: two system administrators, two developers, and one marketing/business specialist.
Years of Experience:
We have extensive experience in proof-of-stake networks, having been involved since the genesis block of major networks such as Cosmos, Polkadot, and Avalanche. Our expertise dates back to the inception of staking. Prior to that, we were network architects with a focus on security.
What other networks are you running validators for?
We operate validators for Ethereum, Gnosis, Polkadot/Kusama, Cosmos, Evmos, Kava, Sentinel, Forta, SSV, Eigenlayer, and others.
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?
Successful launches require a commitment from all participants to complete necessary tasks. Often, large stakeholders such as exchanges or whales delay proceedings by not taking them seriously or failing to actively coordinate, slowing down and complicating the launch. A well-distributed stake among validators aids in smoother launches and upgrades. Failures often stem from poor communication between the core team and the validator community, unclear information sources, diverse communication channels, and misuse of UTC time for coordination. In testnets, launches often fail or are delayed due to the involvement of inexperienced operators or single-person entities with excessive voting power.
Do you have a validator voting framework and process?
We are actively involved in governance. Each team member focuses on a specific set of networks to stay current with the processes. Difficult or conflicting votes are discussed internally before a decision is made.
Are you planning to play any additional roles in the dYdX ecosystem (e.g., market maker, trader, indexer, front-end, other)?
We have experience in developing statistical dashboards and explorers. We aim to add value through these common goods.
Are there other products or services you want to highlight that could be relevant for dYdX? Any notable contributions in other ecosystems that you would like to highlight for the community?
We have developed several front-end projects, including:
We are also committed to community education and frequently write articles in both English and Spanish, which can be found on our Medium page.
We are also proud member and sponsor of one of the most important and active community in Spain:
CryptoPlaza where we collaborate with talks and meetups. Crypto Plaza is one of the first crypto communities in Spain. It has been organizing around 100 events annually for over five years in a space of more than 100 square meters. It actively collaborates with initiatives such as POAP, ETHDenver, Token Engineering, DAOist, and ETHBarcelona. It actively participates in DAOs since its members are active in communities like MakerDAO, AAVE, Lens, Farcaster, and Metacartel.