Greetings, dYdX community!
We are thrilled to join the dYdX community and introduce ourselves as F5 Nodes – an experienced staking provider established in 2021 with a global presence.
Entity name and location
Name: F5 Nodes (https://f5nodes.com)
Location: Canada, Toronto
Infrastructure location
Our validators utilize powerful dedicated servers with unique geolocations in Asia, Africa and North America, selected based on specific project requirements, to achieve optimal decentralization and fault tolerance.
What kind of hardware do you run? Baremetal, cloud-based…? In what geographic regions?
Our hardware infrastructure is built to meet the highest standards of performance and reliability. We use bare metal with high-frequency AMD Epyc CPUs, 512GB - 1TB RAM and NVMe disks to handle data tasks efficiently. Our collective bandwidth reaches 40Gbps.
By leveraging bare metal servers, we ensure high performance and reliability for our nodes.
Technical make-up of team (elaborate on no. of dev ops engineers, experience, etc.)
In our team we have 2 developers and 3 DevOps engineers with experience of over 5+ years. Our experience includes expertise in blockchain technology, node/infrastructure management and software development.
Years of experience
Since our inception, our focus has been on empowering blockchain ecosystems. With a strong foothold in validator services, node management, staking, etc, we have effectively served more than 50 networks around Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, Polkadot and Avalanche ecosystems, alongside the dynamic Move-based blockchains Aptos & Sui.
Operating across different time zones worldwide, our team ensures round-the-clock node monitoring and swift problem resolution. In case of any identified issues, we promptly notify project administrators and provide assistance in resolving them. With the aid of bots and process automation, we can accomplish voting and updates within minutes, ensuring efficiency.
We prioritize the security of our key storage and employ Ledger devices, which are widely recognized as the most secure method to safeguard against potential hacks or unauthorized access.
What other networks are you running validators for?
As a dedicated validators team we actively contribute to ecosystems and support projects in their early stages. Our main goal is to help projects build their networks with high-quality node services provided by our team as well as technical support for the community. Currently we support 35+ advancing network development for promising projects in the Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, Polkadot and Avalanche ecosystems.
However, our involvement extends beyond this ecosystem and as an example, our Aleo validator utilizes AleoBFT, a relatively new technology that we are actively exploring.
By partnering with us, organizations gain access to a comprehensive suite of solutions tailored to their specific needs and goals.
Do you have a validator voting framework and process?
Yes, we analyze proposals from both a technical and community perspective. We participate in governance discussions on forums and contribute to the decision-making process. We also take an active part in the life of the network, communicating with project teams and delegates on governance decisions.
Are you planning to play any additional roles in the dYdX ecosystem (e.g. market maker, trader, indexer, front-end, other)?
F5 Nodes is more than just a service and our dedication extends beyond technical roles to actively participate in building a strong ecosystem for everyone involved. We remain open to potential collaboration and engagement in other capacities, such as providing insights as market participants, contributing to discussions, or assisting with technical aspects like indexing.
Other relevant information:
dYdX has long been a subject of our extensive research, and as validators, we look forward to collaborating with the team to explore mutual ideas and facilitate the widespread implementation of dYdX. Moreover, our team members possess prior trading experience, and we are confident that V4 will present an exciting challenge for us!
Stay empowered,
The F5 Nodes Team
Email: core@f5nodes.com