Global Sustainable Indep. SPO's

A globally distributed self-reliant network is the best defense against a number of major threats to the network

A diverse and healthy ecosystem of stake pool operators from around the globe collectively run the network on a multitude of infrastructures

dispersion of stakepools around the globe

amount of community funds in ada staked to projects/ngo based SPO's

number of verified unique hosting providers/self hosted infrastructures used for SPO's

number of stakepools using green energy primarily

Security of the network relies on a decentralised pool of SPO's to run it. Without proper support, smaller SPO's will struggle against big players moving in and pushing them out untill they have a majority market share. If these organizations use the same hosting providers for all their infrastructure, this adds additional risk.

On the other hand, running nodes and participating in the network can be a great way for community initiatives to support their projects. By supporting and promoting smaller mission focussed SPO's the security of the whole network benefits. Larger hosting providers are also notorious for caring little for their environmental footprint. By promoting SPO's which run on sustainable energy sources we are achieving two goals: A lower ecological footprint of the Cardano network and a more distributed and secure network in terms of infrastructure used.

Fund7 Challenge funding threshold is too low to achieve significant results for a large number of SPOs, which is why this challenge is being submitted again for Fund 8. The demand for this type of challenge is high, reflected in Fund7 with 27 proposals submitted with a funding threshold of $100,000 USD.