You want to maximize your rewards, we get it!
Let’s dig a little deeper and analyze what that really means and how to achieve it. AzureADA (ticker: AZUR) has three top tier stake pools. All our pools are Enterprise Class. We will tell you what that means and why it is a HUGE advantage when entrusting your Ada delegation to maximize rewards.
Three variables are important when choosing a Cardano Stake Pool:
- Infrastructure
- Operations
- Management
Block Production: The Key to your Rewards
The reasons for a stake pool missing blocks or not minting them are numerous. It can be simply losing power from the grid or lost internet access from a snow storm. Natural disasters, civil unrest, burglary, running out of memory, processing power, bandwidth, the server being down for maintenance…the list is endless. The bottom line is a stake pool must be able to make a block when it is called upon to do so. If it can’t, your rewards will be diminished:
Down time = fewer blocks = less Ada rewards in your wallet
Rock solid infrastructure with lots of redundancy or “back up” is needed for when problems occur.
Types of Staking Pool Infrastructure
A Cardano stake pool can run on many types of infrastructure, from budget to enterprise quality servers. It is fundamentally important that the Cardano blockchain network develops on as many different systems as possible, all around the world. There are currently 3126 Cardano stake pools at the time of writing to be precise. This is where decentralization and scalability comes from. A Cardano pool can run on a simple Raspberry Pi inside your home or a top tier cloud server such as Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. This platform alone isn’t the only solution to run a pool but is by far the most advanced and stable infrastructure on the market today. Each set up brings Pros and Cons. For example a Raspberry Pi is cheap to run, but will miss more blocks than a “bare metal” server due to computation limitations and network speed. Comparing all infrastructure types is beyond the scope of this article. However, we can explain the advantages of running our stake pools on Azure servers: it runs fast and worldwide, is practically bulletproof to any service interruption and therefore will only miss the very minimum amount of blocks. On the Cons side, it is one of the most expensive solutions out there. The saying, “You get what you pay for” is very true in this situation.
AzureADA’s Infrastructure
AZUR uses the best Cardano infrastructure available. The Microsoft Azure cloud platform is top of the line, Enterprise Grade infrastructure. Don’t take our word for it, “Azure is being used by a whopping 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies” (see 1). Fortune 500 companies rely on its best in class security and uptime. When minting blocks for the Cardano blockchain, it is all about security and “uptime” or being ready to make blocks which directly reflects maximum rewards. Just as Cardano is provably secure POS (proof of stake), Microsoft Azure is provably the most secure cloud platform.
What does enterprise infrastructure actually mean? Double power supplies, multiple internet service providers (ISP’s), backup copies of data, backup power generators, servers located across different global geographical locations. All of this and more to reduce chances of failure that impact block production. MS Azure is highly resilient!
Critical infrastructure like banks, hospitals, power grids, and governments rely on these features to ensure the highest uptime possible.
Remember, down time = fewer blocks = less Ada rewards in your wallet.
AZUR invests substantial time and money to use this level of quality infrastructure. See the chart below for just how little this infrastructure costs on an annual basis when delegating to one of our stake pools.
Operations
There is always an inherent risk of failure in software or hardware. The ability to recover quickly and not miss making blocks when this happens is critical to your rewards payout. Team AZUR was formed in December 2019 and has been minting blocks on the Cardano blockchain since the beginning known as the ITN (incentivized testnet).
This invaluable period offered adversity such as software interruptions, breakdowns, exposure to multiple attack vectors, and more. The result is a highly experienced and dependable block production operation which benefits those delegated to our stake pools in the form of maximum rewards. Our Chief Operating Officer (COO) alone has over 20 years in IT server security, maintenance, and management with real world experience such as securing a banking corporation and is currently working full time as a Microsoft Azure cloud engineer.
Team AZUR has overlapping, multiple areas of expertise with three other full time Microsoft Azure employees that include an Azure architect, Azure Product Manager and data scientist, and Azure developer specializing in security. One of our team members has even completed the Cardano’s Plutus Pioneers Program which is imperative in writing decentralized applications and smart contracts in Haskell.
We also “divide and conquer” by having a specialized business development team. Thousands and thousands of hours and over 6000 blocks produced attest we live and breathe both Cardano and Microsoft Azure.
Management
Instead of the five of us each running our own single stake pool, we have chosen to pool our talents, skills, and resources to run three pools. This provides what we believe is the ultimate enterprise grade stake pool.
We seek to provide exceptional customer service with announcements, updates, saturation level alerts, and prompt responses to questions. We provide a supportive and dynamic social media experience with Telegram and Twitter, and also publish various content to arm our delegators with the knowledge needed to make the best decision for their hard-earned Ada. We pay it forward by helping new stake pools get set up and running and support charities that other stake pools have chosen to focus on.
AZUR provides Future Proof Stake Pools
Layer Two (L2) solutions like Hydra Head state channels, decentralized applications (dApps), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Decentralized Exchanges (DEX), and more are rapidly evolving. This requires increased operator skills and proficiency to mint blocks consistently, and infrastructure that can be rapidly expanded. Increased work loads, complexity, congestion are coming for all stake pools. We have not only the technical skills and mastery (think ITN and the SundaeSwap DEX) but the ability to expand infrastructure (for example servers, bandwidth, storage, and more) to give you peace of mind as Cardano approaches rapid adoption.
What are we up to after SundaeSwap? We are an official Ardana pool operator and always on the lookout for other projects to get involved with. At this point, we have a proven track record of being a very performant and stable member of the Cardano ecosystem and will benefit any project we are lucky enough to be involved with. We are actively seeking opportunities to provide even more rewards/airdrop and contribute to the Cardano ecosystem.
