In light of the recent post on the Cardano Forums ( https://forum.cardano.org/t/cardano-foundations-community-management-team-supports-folding-home-for-covid19-research/31523 ) ADA North Pool has decided to support this effort by dedicating the backup computer node to folding@home to support the community effort to help research on Covid-19. We would like to thank the Cardano Foundation for encouraging such an effort.
Category: General
So encouraged by Charles post on staking pool making videoes I created one today that you can find here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ4dlmw_Dsg
Currently I just need to do some cable managment but as you can see we are running straight from ISP to pool.
I got word from the 2nd fiber provider (Homenet) that they are coming to install the fibre connection in week 11. That means we will have more redundancy for ANP with one fibre connection dedicated and connected straight to network card and the home fibre connection as a 2nd fibre connection. This should help with robustness for the server and is a stepping stone towards also full redundancy with either 5G or Starlink internet whatever is provided first. (likely 2021-2022).
With Jormungandr 0.8.11 you can fetch the genesis block with http(s). Enabling this functionality will not only reduce load on the IOHK trusted peers, but also reduces your bootstrap times, all you need to do is add the fetch block0 service in your node_config.yaml or in node_config.json.
JSON configuration
{
"log": [
{
"format": "plain",
"level": "info",
"output": "stderr"
}
],
"http_fetch_block0_service": [
"https://adanorthpool.com/bootstrap"
(you can add multiple addresses here as well)
],
...
YAML configuration
---
log:
- format: plain
level: info
output: stderr
http_fetch_block0_service:
- https://adanorthpool.com/bootstrap/
(you can add multiple addresses here as well)
...
To keep it short ADA North Pool now also has a telegram group https://t.me/adanorthpool
Categories
ANP produced block #1000 during epoch 45
It has been a great honor to be part of the ITN testnet for 45 days and during this time period by now having produced 1000 blocks is a symbolic milestone. The only way this was achieved was due to someone out there having faith in ANP and what we will accomplish for the ecosystem – to those I simply say I am honored by the trust and I work hard to make ANP contribute in meaningful ways. Thank you delegators!
So I wanted to write a bit about my background with a master degree in law and also in psychology. I think if I see a opportunity for contribution to the ecosystem in the fields of governance, legal research or also psychology I will try to contribute. It will surely be baby steps but I am going to focus time on writing smart contracts and thinking of easy to implement contracts with real life impact. I think a legal DSL is still years away but I do want to let the public know that there is already much research on the topic and quite old as such (see this thread for an example) and if I see a path towards building such a DSL I would want to take that journey.
My background from psychology was quite varied, from writing on gaming addiction (Everquest then World of Warcraft) before that was even a thing – to studying how teachers facilitated language acquisition in Concordia Language Villages. Same with my law studies that went from varied topics such as child rights law to energy law. I have also been a renewable energy advocate and I represented share holders in a power struggle with share dilution in the company Renewable Energy Corporation – and in that period wrote several analytical works on solar energy – for example this. I have been a stock investor for several years and you can find some of my articles on seeking alpha. So that is some short things about me that maybe could help delegators get to know me slightly better 🙂
I also want to take this opportunity to thank my delegators and if any of you want to get in touch with me feel free to write me an email. I currently expect that ANP also on the main net and setting up a company both for smart contracts, oracle services and as a staking pool and expanding on whatever direction is the most successful / achieving goals seems realistic.
Since network capabilities are important for any healthy network service provider like what a staking pool in reality is, I have decided that one of the most important aspect I can improve the pool is in its network capabilities. So to further my already investing into network hardware I am also scaling up the connections to internet as well. A dedicated 1GB fiber connection will also make it easier for me to differentiate the costs of running the pool between my day to day fibre conneciton used at home. Having an extra fiber connection from another ISP provider also gives the pool redundancy. Hopefully this will in retrospect be a good move for the staking pools future.
Categories
ANP installs new network hardware
I notice degrading performance in our block production and decided this was a good opportunity to install the Mellanox Connect X 4 card for the server. We have not yet installed the new router as we are waiting on some transceivers but having now installed the network card and it is operational should cut downtime when we do change over new router as well.
Categories
Update on ANP Servers
We had a few rough periods and needed to rethink our approach. In that regard we made a new server structure as can be seen below in the image.
This has improved our stability and now our main pool server has had an uptime over a day without any problems. We are converting now around 82% of blocks an improvement of 75% from previous settings.
Finally an update on network equipment: Router has arrived and network cards as well. But we are waiting for the transceivers / cable equipment. Probably by next week we have everything and ready to install. The installation is likely to take half a day or with maximum preparations I could probably manage to get the pool up and running again in 1-2 hours. I will try to select a point in between blocks that is optimal – probably during next weekend.