Cardano Stake Pool Library

The Cardano Stake Pool Library will offer summaries, category filtering etc to enable a better way to choose a pool that suits your values

Entrepreneur 25+ years in desktop/web/cloud/mobile/data development, building, mentoring greenfield agile teams and transforming companies

Overview

The current method to choose a stake pool is very technical and there is no way to distinguish one stake pool from another without visiting each url - which will just not happen.

Users will either choose an entry off the first screen in the app (which may be saturated so will not be the best choice) or they will choose one by visiting https://adapools.org/ and looking at the first page. They may even visit a few websites but with 1167 stake pools and rising (at the time of this proposal) the playing field is not fair.

The Cardano Stake Pool Library will offer many ways for the user to investigate and filter the stake pool list to help them be better informed of who they are ultimately supporting with their ADA.

Technical Filters

Filter by stake pool on the following:

• up time
• saturation
• number of created blocks
• (ROA) return on ADA (ROA)
• fees
• pledge
• number of delegates
• total delegated

Non-Technical Filters

• country of origin
• number of employees/owners
• type of business
• values/beliefs
• lots more to be decided

Tags

Up to 10 tags can be added by the Stake Pool operator to further define their proposition.

Stake Pool Summary

The stake pool operator will be invited to populate their stake pools information giving them the chance to stand out from the crowd by explaining what makes them different; this could be hosting setup, their beliefs, values etc.

• brief description
• long description
• website details
• social media details – Facebook, Twitter, Telegram etc.
• logo
• why choose us? area

API

The Cardano Stake Pool Library will have an API that can be used by developers to integrate the stake pool details into their applications.

WIKI

The Cardano Stake Pool Library will have lots of technical and non-technical articles to help developers, stake pool operators and the wider community. Examples are detailed explanation of the Stake Pool parameters, how to setup a stake pool, how to choose a stake pool etc

What does the current team look like?

I have a small team of developers, testers and analysts at my disposal that have worked together on many projects. I am self-funding the project. I hope one day to have an established company with full time employees but at the moment I am a start-up bootstrapping alongside my full time job.

The current team is as follows:

Rob – Founder

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-greig-2076b053/

Rob is a serial entrepreneur, building businesses and developing software for 20 years in various industries. Highly skilled developer and Business Analyst. Previously built an estate agent monitoring system and an advanced automated backend/cloud API business that was sold to one of the largest UK estate agent portals (Fish4) and media company 'Trinity Mirror'.

Excels in software planning, development, management along with building and mentoring small to medium development teams.

Ant - Founder

Ant is a serial entrepreneur, building businesses and testing software for 20 years in various industries. Fully Trained software tester previously worked for large high street companies (Maginus/Torex Retail/PC World/Matalan) testing their in-store user systems. Was part of the same company that built Agent Analyser and House Fusion later sold to 'Trinity Mirror'.

Dave – Lead Developer

Dave is a highly experienced and loyal web and API developer that has worked for small and large companies and worked with the original Rockstar Games (Grand Theft Auto). Energetic and a team player who loves to explore new technology.

David – Developer

David is a youthful experienced and loyal web developer that has worked for small and large companies and is trained in Salesforce CRM development.

Callum – Social Media Marketing

Callum is a talented Photoshop and Video creator who has previously helped Luxury Car Showrooms build their Instagram followers from 0 to 300k in 3 months. With a keen eye for Photography and editing he is an asset to any team.

Future Positions

There are plans for more developers, analysts, admin, sales and marketing employees if larger funds became available and the project gained traction.

Central Hub

As a central hub for everything stake pool related, the library will have links and articles related to creating and running a stake pool along with other Cardano related articles and media such as podcasts, YouTube channels etc.

What will the Cardano Funds be used for?

I will use the Cardano funds to complete the development of the main website which will then enable the system to be presented to the stake pool operators to populate. The entries will then be verified before publishing. I envisage the site will be live within 6 months.

The website will be hosted on the scalable Microsoft Azure hosting platform allowing the performance to be easily upgraded in seconds if the site becomes popular. There are hosting costs associated with this which will also be taken from the funds.

Ant and I will continue to bootstrap the project and will not take any wage for ourselves and contribute an additional £7,500 to the fund to go towards wages and other costs.

Having worked on the project plan in more detail I would require funding for 2-3 people for 6 months working out to be approximately 80,000 ADA.

I am planning on staking 42k of ADA and hope the price would have appreciated in 6-9 months - this should lead to the project self-funding itself for a good length of time. If the funds run out I will continue to bootstrap the project and look for other ways to monetise the project.

Roadmap/Backlog

M1 = milestone 1, M2 = milestone 2 etc.

• Setup Microsoft Azure SQL Server, App Service and Website (M1)

• Build main website

• Technical Filters (M1)

• Non –Technical Filters (M1)

• About Us (M1)

• How To, Registration etc. (M1)

• External News Articles (M1)

• In House News Articles (M2)

• New Stake Pools Section (M1)

• Other sections (M2 etc.)

• General Cryptocurrency Information

• Live Coin Prices (M1)

• Price Converter (M1)

• Price Chart (M1)

• Gather Stake Pool Information (M1, M2 etc.)

• Import Basic Cardano Information for Stake Pool (M1)

• Build Stake Pool Information Questionnaire (M1)

• Populate Stake Pool Database (M1, M2 etc.)

• Contact Stake Pools (M1, M2 etc.)

• Library Resources (M1, M2 etc.)

• Build Stake Pool API (M1 v1.0)

• Links to Cardano Community built podcasts, articles, videos, forums (M1, M2 etc.)

• Investigate ways to integrate with other Cardano Community projects/websites (M1, M2 etc.)

What does success look like from Fund2?

• To have the main website built and accomplish Milestone 1 as outlined above.
• Initially whilst developing the website I would look to build the system with a small number of stake pools (sub 10) then contact and have the site enriched with 50 to 100 stake pools for launch. (note: all stake pools will be listed with basic information on launch)
• After launch I will begin on-boarding more and more stake pools and start to provide my own news content to the website.
• A great measure of initial success for "go launch" after 6 months would be

• 5 or more 3rd party developers using the API
• 10+ news articles
• 50+ stake pools with enhanced information on the website
• 500+ regular visitors per month
• Real-time Cryptocurrency tools

• Cardano information
• Other coin information

• Solid foundation to build upon
• 2 Full time employees working on the website
• Recognised growing domain in the Cardano Community space

Future Funding and Enhancements

I will need to update the website with feedback from the initial trials and start to on board the remaining/new stake pools.

As the system will not be generating income I will investigate ways to monetise the platform whilst keeping the API and main information free for all. Advertising/promotions may be added somewhere but will not interfere with the goal to be a platform for all. I would imagine it may be possible to create promoted news articles.

I would like to build a large social media following via YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. as this has worked very well in growing previous brands my team and I have worked on.

Highlighting the benefits the Stake Pools are giving back will be an important goal for the site. We will be building articles and showing the world the value added by the project externals contributors.

What value does Cardano Stake Pool Library bring to Cardano?

The Cardano Stake Pool Library is aimed at building on top of existing Cardano stake pool infrastructure and offering a new way to discover and interact with Stake Pools. By having a single location that gives the Stake Pools a chance to show the founders personality, it will help bring a new angle to a growing audience of ADA stakers that are not only interested in the short term performance, but are interested in the macro view and share the same vision as the stake pool owners.

It is hoped stake pool owners will engage with the Cardano Stake Pool Library and find a new way to promote their "brand". The Cardano Stake Pool Library is aimed at both established high performing stake pools and new/slow performing ones. A voice for all.

By providing the API and other development resource this will allow 3rd party developers additional tools to build on top of Cardano. By showing how the eco-system is being actively developed this should encourage larger Cardano development adoptions.

IP/Copyright

All IP and licensing of the website will remain vested with me. The outcome of this proposal will be a service for the community.

There will be lots of free tools and open source downloads to help grow the knowledge of the community.