A Spotlight on Stake Pools: CanadaStakes [CAN1]

Exploring CAN1’s bare-metal mission, community impact, and ADAView development

Cardano’s ecosystem thrives on the integral contributions of stake pool operators (SPOs), who provide tools, support, and innovations that drive network resilience. The Foundation’s “A Spotlight on Stake Pools” series highlights SPOs worldwide, seeking to showcase their unique experiences, including challenges, opportunities, motivations, and successes.

In our previous edition, we featured Lauris, operator of StakePool24/7 [EU01], who shared his journey from testnet SPO to key contributor in the Cardano ecosystem. His work included creating cSnapshot.io and supporting SPOs via Telegram and YouTube.

This time, we speak with Jonny, operator of the CAN1 stake pool, who offers insights into running a bare-metal pool in Ottawa, Canada, and building ADAView—a user-friendly web tool designed to introduce newcomers to Cardano through a familiar interface.

Why did you become a stake pool operator?

I have a computer science background, and I've always been fascinated with mathematics and cryptography. I have been interested in blockchain technology since 2017 and following Cardano’s development since 2019. I was really fascinated by the technology potential behind Cardano, and I figured the best way to fully understand it on a more technical level was to actually get involved. Since this was pre-Alonzo era, being an SPO was the natural choice. That has allowed me to become a part of the community slowly over time.

After looking into how many of the SPOs were operating, I realized there was an abundance of SPOs running on AWS or other cloud providers, and indeed, the initial stake pool course I followed was using an AWS machine. I wanted to provide a bare metal stake pool that would operate outside of a cloud environment and provide additional decentralization to the network. Rather than only investing in the network financially, I wanted to invest my time in the development of support tools for the network.

What is the mission of your stake pool?

The mission of our stake pool is to provide additional decentralization to the Cardano network through bare metal hosting, while also giving back to the community through various channels. We are also looking at introducing new people to the community through the promotion of our stake pool, and hopefully build a thriving Cardano community in Ottawa.

Currently, we are operating as a 0% pool, which allows us to maximize the delegator rewards. Since we are a bare metal pool, the investment was more up front in establishing the infrastructure and hardware to operate rather than monthly fees on procuring cloud infrastructure, which allows us to operate without a loss as a 0% pool.

Can you give us a brief history of your stake pool?

Initially, I had looked at operating a stake pool during the Incentivized Testnet (ITN) days, but I was unable to allocate the necessary time. However, I had gained a substantial amount of knowledge about the community, and in January 2021 I took up the challenge and began operating a public testnet stake pool using Raspberry Pi infrastructure. After a few months of successfully learning the ins and outs of the node operations on the public testnet and building some community connections, we made the jump to the mainnet.

Having a few delegators lined up since day one, we had been operating for six to eight months with just under 1M delegation, which was allowing us to mint blocks on a regular basis.

On the side, we have been developing another tool called ADAView, which allows people to see a familiar “online banking” view of their wallets, because we quickly learned the hurdles to entry into the crypto space were how confusing blockchain transactions are to new people.

After developing this community tool and applying for CF delegations, we have been able to attract new delegations, and our pool has grown to a stable position. At the time of writing, we are sitting at about 6M delegation and are contributing to the network in a very positive manner.

How did the Cardano Foundation delegation impact your stake pool operation?

The Cardano Foundation was immensely helpful in bootstrapping our pool with multiple delegations over time, which has allowed our pool to produce rewards comparable with other stake pools and helped us attract new delegators.

In addition, the tools, documentation, and support provided by the Cardano Foundation through the many online resources—such as Discord and Telegram—have allowed us to become a very competent SPO and continue to share our experiences and our knowledge with new SPOs going forward.

Did the Cardano Foundation delegation enable you to build or improve tools, projects, or open-source repositories?

Yes, our stake pool would not be where it is today without the Cardano Foundation delegation. We had initially received a delegation and saw our pool attract new delegators. However, once the delegation ended, we noticed the delegators slowly moved on to other pools.

The second time we received a Cardano Foundation delegation was when the path changed. We noticed that, slowly over time, our delegation increased—and it kept increasing due to the fact that we received the delegation for an extended period of time. This momentum has led to a fairly stable delegation of 6M ada at the time of writing, ensuring our continued ability to make blocks each epoch. Most importantly, it will enable us to offer a stable platform for new users and introduce them to the Cardano network.

How would you summarize your contributions to the Cardano ecosystem?

Our contributions to the Cardano ecosystem have been, first, to support decentralization via bare-metal servers and a stable infrastructure; second, to provide tools for onboarding new people to the space with our ADAView web portal; thirdly, through knowledge transfer and assistance, mainly via Discord in the IOG's technical channel; and lastly, supporting the development and test networks that are required for future development, as we had been operating a public testnet pool for two years, and are currently operating pools on preview, preprod, and SanchoNet.

Additionally, we have been operating Mithril signers on all networks to support the development and operations of the Mithril protocol, and I am excited to see where the Mithril protocol could lead.

I think our most important contribution to date is the ADAView web portal, which is what we use to introduce new people to the space, and provides a real-time view that merges both transactions and rewards into a single view, and is meant to provide a familiar online banking-style interface for new users.

Are you currently building or working on something that you would like to share?

ADAView is a project that continues to receive enhancements over time. Version 2 now adds support for vote delegation and adahandles. It does not provide access to connect to a user wallet, but merely a way to view and track wallets in a disconnected manner.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I just want to thank you for the opportunity provided, and the fact that the Cardano community has been very welcoming in general and provided me an opportunity to use my skills towards something that I can call my own, and build and be creative within the space.

To learn more about CanadaStakes [CAN1], visit the stake pool’s website.

The Cardano Foundation encourages all operators to submit the SPO notification form. Completing this form ensures that SPOs receive updates on the newest operator tools, upcoming delegation rounds, on-chain governance developments, and other pertinent information.