Blockdaemon offers a multi-chain multi-cloud network management tool that can deploy nodes and connect them to blockchains within minutes

This is a new series highlighting the amazing work node operators on the Oasis Network are doing. To learn more and to become a node operator on the Oasis Network, go here.

Tell us about the Blockdaemon team — who are you, where are you based

Blockdaemon’s node management platform helps auto-scale blockchain networks securely with enhanced monitoring, back-up systems, HA clusters, APIs and cloud-managed node monitoring of on-premises solutions with our Blockchain Package Manager (BPM) — similar to an enhanced DataDog for blockchain nodes. Builders looking to interact with public, permission-based, and staking networks can connect to 30+ protocols through the Blockdaemon Marketplace.

We are headquartered in Los Angeles, but have team members distributed all over the world including Ireland, England, and recently expanded our footprint in Germany and Asia-Pacific.

What made you interested in Proof-of-Stake networks? What was the first network you ran a validator for? What other networks are you running validators for?

We originally got interested in Proof-of-Stake networks as a promising experiment attempting to improve the scalability and speed of blockchain networks. Livepeer was the first network we ran a validator for, and we are currently running validators for Oasis, Algorand, Celo, Tezos, Polkadot, Kusama, Cosmos, Aion, Near, Mobilecoin, Transparent Systems, Flow, Keep, Skale, Coda, Harmony, and continue to add more.

Tell us about your business model and how you think about delegation and commission rates

We have a SaaS model where users can deploy nodes and connect to 30+ networks via our marketplace. Delegation is a small but important part of our business model. We like to run our own public validators that anyone can delegate to for a small commission, but we also sell validators for dollars per month to those who wish to have their own.

In addition to running nodes, does your team focus on other aspects of the blockchain ecosystem? Community efforts, building tooling, token economic research, etc?

We are very active in the crypto community, attending and participating in as many events as we can (even if they are all virtual for now). We are also involved in financial inclusion alliances and foundations to support their networks as their infrastructure provider. Leveraging grants from leading protocols and foundations such as Oasis Protocol Foundation, Tezos, Celo, Web3 Foundation, and the Stellar Development Foundation, has allowed us to create easy-to-use integrations and monitoring tools for an easy way to show uptime, speed, and support arming users with key metrics and alerts.

Tell us about why you joined the Oasis Network. What made you interested to join?

Privacy. No one wants their entire financial history being exposed to the world every time they send a transaction. Oasis has a strong team with world leading cryptographers that we know can build a safe, secure, and private network. In addition to having advanced monitoring and analytics, Blockdaemon is internally ISO 27001 compliant, with enterprise-grade security and backup systems so working with the Oasis network is a great fit.

Anything that’s made you particularly excited about the Network — technology-wise, community-wise, etc?

With such a strong focus on privacy, it is exciting to see the first smart contract platform that has built in privacy on every layer providing scalability on a secure, decentralized network. With these capabilities as part of their protocol, the potential for a variety of applications is possible which truly enables creativity and innovation.

From the community perspective, we believe that academia and universities are very important for blockchain ecosystems by providing secure nodes to help run the network. We are collaborating with top tier universities that want to participate in the Oasis network which allows us to help democratize node operations securely and enhance the network infrastructure. We’re happy to see the enthusiasm that the Oasis team has to incorporate universities that are curious to learn and research their protocol and have solid network custodians interacting with the network.

Any feedback or things we should work on?

It has been a pleasure working with the Oasis team and we would like to continue seeing them showcase the use cases they see emerge utilizing their network.

In 5 years where do you hope to see the Oasis Network? What kinds of problems would you like the community and foundation to be focused on solving collectively?

We would like to see the community focus on self-sovereign control of data and money, as well as onboarding the bankless to the global economy.

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