A Spotlight on Stake Pools: Dquadrant [JUNO]

Stake pool operators (SPOs) form the foundation of Cardano’s ecosystem, delivering tools, support, and innovation that strengthen the network’s resilience. Through the Foundation’s “A Spotlight on Stake Pools” series, operators from around the world gain recognition for their distinct journeys. Each is defined by its own challenges, opportunities, motivations, and achievements.

In our previous edition, we featured the operator of the FRADA stake pool, a "Made in France" operation that contributes to decentralization and a low carbon footprint. We learned how Victor leverages his skills as an IT engineer to contribute to the ecosystem by creating open-source scripts, such as a security audit script and a KES key rotation companion, to help other stake pool operators with security and maintenance.

In this instalment, we're spotlighting Ronald, operator of the Dquadrant stake pool, whose long-term involvement in the software industry, coupled with an early fascination with blockchain and a commitment to Cardano's scientific approach, led to the founding of JUNO. This stake pool has since significantly contributed to the ecosystem by creating a diverse set of open-source solutions, such as the Kuber API and Kuber IDE, which address critical needs for the Cardano developer community.

Why did you become a stake pool operator?

Since I was a teenager, I have always been interested and fascinated by technology, finance, and the intersection of both. As such, I followed my path of interest and studied computer science and post-business economics, for which I both graduated.

After completing my studies, I was offered a job as a developer at a software company, and this is how I ended up in the software industry, where I have been working for over 30 years.

During this time, I learned what differentiates you from the rest in this business. Most important is that you stay motivated and interested in the latest technological innovations, and that you keep yourself up to date by studying and experimenting with them. Not everyone has this motivation. This is how I ended up starting my own software company in the middle of the financial crisis in 2007, where people called me crazy for doing so.

I was not happy with the companies I had been working for so far; they were not doing something extraordinary other than hiring people out, not keeping their employees motivated, concerned, or providing them with education. It all came from my own initiatives, and they were banking on it. I thought I could do better, believed in myself, and was motivated despite challenging economic circumstances. I wanted to prove them all wrong, and I think I did.

My curiosity about technological innovations drew me to the blockchain, especially when programmability through smart contracts became available with the Ethereum EVM.

The whole idea of digital, programmable money protected by cryptography, run by decentralized individuals (you and me), offering a new financial model without intermediaries, was fascinating and became directly appealing to me.

In my free time, alongside running my software business, I decided to build my own Ethereum miner to gain a deeper understanding of this technology. At that time, the majority of interest was concentrated mainly around Bitcoin and Ethereum's proof of work (PoW) consensus algorithms.

The knowledge I acquired by running my own Ethereum miner enabled me to teach students at the local university about blockchain, which helped me enhance my personal network with new contacts.

It was at one of these events that I met a group of similarly minded people, including my current business partner at Dquadrant. Not long after this, we started working together on our first Ethereum projects. Cardano didn’t exist at that time.

At the very early stages of the ICO mania, Cardano went public, released its whitepaper, and launched its token, ada, on a few CEXs. After reading the Cardano whitepaper, it was obvious to me that this project had a completely different approach than most projects in the blockchain space at that time. Especially the scientific, more rigorous, and research-first driven approach, together with the energy-efficient consensus protocol Ouroboros proof of stake (POS), resonated with me. Additionally, coming from an Ethereum background, it would address the majority of the problems we encountered during our development and deployment on Ethereum. As such, I saw an early business opportunity.

I decided to go for it and spend more of my private time on this project by running a jormungandr (Rust-based) stake pool on the Incentivized Test Net (ITN), getting myself familiar with the underlying technology. This stake pool later evolved into the cardano-node (Haskell-based) known as JUNO on mainnet.

Through the stake pool, I remained informed about the latest updates introduced by IOHK to Cardano. I was able to familiarize myself with the underlying software and tooling. Building my own binaries on the basis of the source code repositories provided by IOHK and later IntersectMBO (cardano-node, cardano-cli, mithril-server, and mithril-client). I built my own docker container-based infrastructure (not relying on the docker containers or binaries provided at a later stage by IOHK), deployed it, and automated it over time.

In early 2020, I thought the time had come to do something more serious on Cardano than just running a stake pool and contributing to the security of the network. I asked my business partner to join me on the Cardano journey. Although I hesitated at the start, since many functional parts were still missing, I was able to convince him that this situation would also provide an opportunity for us. As such, we founded Dquadrant specifically for our development on Cardano and invested time and money to get our team of developers familiar with the Haskell functional programming language (the underlying development language of Cardano) and all the infrastructural components Cardano is relying on.

This was the time when we started our first own internal projects and where our ideas arose since we were standing literally with both feet in the mud of the Cardano project, a blockchain that didn’t have tooling, a serious lack of documentation, only code repositories to reverse engineer, and no one available to support your questions.

Our first serious project began just before Fund 3 of Project Catalyst, when we met two other individuals who had the idea to create an NFT marketplace on Cardano. They didn’t have any development knowledge or developers themselves to execute the project, so we decided to team up with them and bring one of the first NFT marketplaces to Cardano, where Cardano lacked smart contracts and a PAB at that time.

The project was completely self-funded, although successfully launched and operating with some unique features for that time like an english auction and iNFT’s (interactive NFT’s, NFT’s that change over time) the project was not a success due to the high barriers of entrance introduced by the business, for example curation by a group of artist to be able to enter the platform. Other NFT platforms with no barrier to entry were more successful and attracted the majority of the NFT audience. During the economically challenging bear market and without any funding, the business was not viable anymore, and we had to close down the NFT marketplace, also known as Artano.

For us at Dquadrant, this project was the start that put our software company on the map within the Cardano ecosystem. We were recognized for extraordinary achievements by IOHK as one of the first teams having a DApp operational on mainnet without smart contract functionality and no Plutus Application Backend (PAB) available.

This is how we came to work directly for IOHK and later Intersect, contributing to the open-source ethos on Cardano by developing a diverse set of tools.

So in summary, I joined the Cardano project since I saw a business opportunity, and for this, I decided to become a stake pool operator. My story proves that when you believe in yourself, are motivated, and have the right people behind you, you should go for the opportunity even though there might be a lot of challenges to overcome.

What is the mission of your stake pool?

The mission of the JUNO stake pool (single SPO) is to contribute to the decentralization, performance, and security of the Cardano blockchain. For this, our nodes are always up to date with the latest software versions, testing releases before on preview-testnet and pre-prod, and constantly following the latest developments.

Next to this, it is our mission to build open source solutions that help developers on Cardano. We do this via Dquadrant, and we always do so based on a need we personally encounter within the ecosystem. By creating a solution for this, we are not only helping ourselves overcome this hurdle but also the broader Cardano developer community.

We keep the community, followers, and delegators informed via social media such as LinkedIn, X, and Telegram.

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

JUNO stake pool was the result of pioneering work as an early stake pool operator on the Incentivized Test Net (ITN).

The JUNO stake pool was launched as one of the first 50 stake pools to go live on the Shelley mainnet on 29 July 2020 at 23:54 CEST. Its first block was created on 20 August 2020.

The JUNO stake pool is operated from the Netherlands, where I live, and this is the only stake pool I am operating on Cardano. It is running on bare metal servers, a mix of cloud and self-hosted (hybrid) geographically dispersed servers with a green footprint (solar panels and wind energy), and enough capacity to support the growth of the Cardano blockchain.

My personal goal has always been to provide a professional experience for delegators of ada where they don't have to worry about the uptime and block production of the stake pool.

JUNO offers excellent performance, resilience, and failover for our block producer with active (minimal 3) and passive relay node(s). As backup, JUNO got an extra internet line and an 18.6 kWh battery pack connected to solar panels that can last around 48 hours without an electrical line or solar power.

The long-term success of the JUNO stake pool is dependent on our delegators and supporters, who appreciate my work as a single stake pool operator and value the professional experience I provide. They also see the value in the open source contributions we bring to the developer ecosystem on Cardano through Dquadrant.

JUNO was identified by the Cardano Foundation for its “outstanding contributions” since the CF started supporting ecosystem builders and contributors. This makes me especially proud of our team that our work (contributions to Cardano) is recognized, but also for our delegators, since they are the cornerstone of the JUNO stake pool. Some of them have been supporting us for a long time, and it guarantees block production and rewards on their stake.

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

As owner of JUNO stake pool I personally want to thank the Cardano Foundation for their recognition, their delegation contributes directly to the pool rewards and supports me with the payment for our hosting services (I am running the pool on different networks and also have a mithril signer active in total 10 different servers), it provides additional rewards for our delegators on their stake and it motivates us to continue contributing open source solutions to Cardano. The amount of delegation received increases the number of slots assigned by the lottery and the block production rate of the JUNO stake pool, resulting in additional pool and delegation rewards.

We are hopeful that one day we will also get the support from the community that gives our stake pool the necessary push forward. We love to see that for all ecosystem builders dedicated to Cardano, not just those focused on community DApps or maintaining a large social media following due to their constant social media presence, which is often not feasible for many teams.

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

The Cardano Foundation delegation contributes to the pool rewards, which directly support the costs of hosting our stake pool services. Being recognized by the Cardano Foundation for our contributions is an honor, and it motivates us to continue building open-source solutions for the Cardano developer community.

Though the pool rewards earned with the Foundation’s delegation are not sufficient to cover the costs of our infrastructure and maintenance, we remain thankful for every kind of support.

The recognition communicated on Twitter draws attention to our work and stake pool, which helps us find new opportunities for Dquadrant on Cardano.

How would you summarize your contributions to the Cardano ecosystem?

As mentioned before, our open source contributions to the Cardano ecosystem originate from a need that we, as a development company on Cardano (Dquadrant), personally encounter.

Below, I will give some examples:

With the Kuber API, we created this open source transaction library without any funding out of our NFT marketplace developments, since there was no such open source transaction library available at that moment. For every DApp, you need to create transactions on Cardano, so you want to do this in a standardized and reusable way that has value to any other development team. We extended this transaction library with Governance transactions, which have value for teams that create open source Governance solutions.

Initially, this library was JSON and Haskell-based based. Still, we extended it with JavaScript to serve a broader audience, adding more value to this library by targeting a larger developer audience. We are currently extending this library with Hydra transactions, which are in progress, targeting DApps that wish to integrate with Hydra for lower transaction fees and faster execution. The Hydra extension is the first part of our library to have been funded by Project Catalyst, primarily through support from the Cardano Foundation, which was seen as a protest vote.

Impact: We expect our library, which supports normal governance and soon Hydra transactions, to be used by a broader audience based on its support for JavaScript and the current in-progress Hydra integration, which should become an attractive alternative for many DApps that wish to integrate with Hydra. It will help speed up Cardano's scalability plans since DApp integration with Hydra will be made easier, rather than spending a lot of time on low-level integration, which is, for many development teams, too big a hurdle to overcome. For end-users of DApps, this brings cheaper transactions and faster execution.

For the Kuber IDE, we created this open-source solution without any funding to facilitate the flexible onboarding of new developers to our own team on Cardano. One of the biggest challenges every software development company faces is employee turnover. So, the question is, how do you onboard new developers in such a situation, where you want them to become productive as quickly as possible on Cardano without wasting time setting up backend dependencies?

This solution delivers value to any team that has Haskell developers and is an ideal solution for hackathons where you want developers to become productive in a new development language. No sign-up is required; simply start your browser, log in with your Google or GitHub account, and begin developing smart contracts on Cardano. We have a proposal to maintain this solution for another year, as it is valuable to Cardano. It is currently used to train new students in Africa to develop in Haskell. Despite node diversity, Haskell will not easily disappear from Cardano, as all core developments were done in Haskell and will also need to be maintained over time, requiring developers with knowledge of Haskell.

Impact: Hackathons, onboarding new Haskell talents (currently hard to find)

For Autonomous Agent Testing, we developed this solution while we were hired to perform QA for GovTool. We encountered a problem: how do we test governance actions in a real scenario? No solutions were available, so we developed our own open source solution, specifically designed to test governance actions in a large user setting, similar to thousands of people participating in Governance. By spinning up thousands of autonomous agents that are interacting with governance actions, you get a realistic scenario, and you can tell if the solution works, yes or no, before moving it to mainnet.

The direct value is created for Cardano Governance and future governance actions, as the solution reduces testing time significantly and detects bugs earlier. Project Catalyst funded this project. We now have a new proposal to make this solution fit for the broader Cardano DApp developer ecosystem, known as the Autonomous Agent Testing SDK, as it is not only useful for Governance but also for any DApp. We like to adopt this solution so it can work for any DApp and be used by any DApp developer, reducing the time they have to spend on testnet.

Impact: Decreases testnet time, Testing on scale made easy, Earlier detection of issues, and Earlier deployment on mainnet

For the Cardano Test Wallet with Private Network Support, we created part of this solution to support our QA work on the Vasil hard fork. We also utilized our NFT marketplace to simulate the behavior of a DApp on Cardano before and after the hard fork. This solution was self-funded. We integrated our own developed Cardano Test Wallet with Playwright (an end-to-end testing framework for modern web apps), which allows you to fully automate user interactions that none of the Cardano web wallets are capable of. Instead of having an individual user test specific smart contract interactions that require transactions to be signed, you can completely automate this process and let multiple users interact in particular patterns, discovering issues earlier than through manual testing.

The value of this solution is obvious, and we have also used it during QA for the Chang hard fork and the QA of GovTools. We have a proposal to enhance this solution with a private network, as automation through agents like Autonomous Agent Testing requires more TADA (test ADA) than is provided by the faucet. What is provided is based on testing smart contracts by a very small group of users, whereas with agents, several hundreds or thousands interact with different smart contracts simultaneously. While Cardano Test Wallet already has value because of the automation of user interaction, it gets even more value for agentic solutions by adding a private network without dependencies on a faucet.

Impact: Automation of E2E testing reduces testing time significantly, Ideal for the agentic age since no dependencies on faucets that cause delays, Test Automation at scale

Below are all our contributions to the Cardano ecosystem.

Open source developments:

1. Plutus Haskell blueprint for NFT marketplace and AgeUSD stablecoin (open source, funded)
2. Delegationtracker (discontinued development due to no support from the community, self-funded).
3. Artano NFT minter (discontinued and integrated in artano.io, self-funded)
4. Artano NFT marketplace(business discontinued, self-funded)
5. iNFTs, NFTs that can change over time (integrated in artano.io, self-funded)
6. NFT registry (discontinued due to no support from the community, self-funded)
7. Kuber API as a replacement for the PAB (open source)
8. Kuber API support on Dmeter.run (support of the new Plutus Pioneer Program 2023)
9. Cardano-marketplace (open source)
10. Kuber IDE (open source, self-funded)
11. Cardano Mempool Explorer (funded by Project Catalyst, 100k ada)
12. Kuber API extension for Hydra scaling (funded by Project Catalyst through vote CF. 100K ada)
13. Cardano Test Wallet (Vasil hard fork testing, Chang hard fork testing, GovTool testing, self-funded)
14. Autonomous Agent Testing (governance actions testing at scale, funded by Project Catalyst, 100k ada)

4 out of 14 open source developments have been funded, 1 through IOHK directly (Haskell blueprint templates) and 3 through Project Catalyst proposals (Cardano Mempool Explorer, Kuber extension for Hydra scaling through CF vote, Autonomous Agent Testing)

Support IOHK

• Consensus 2021 - Plutus/Haskell hackathon
• Consensus 2022 - Plutus/Haskell hackathon
• Cardano community tickets (Plutus/Haskell) support

IOHK developments

• Vasil hard fork QA testing
• SECP256K1 QA testing
• Cardano node extension development
• Voltaire QA testing

Intersect developments

• Chang hard fork QA testing
• GovTool QA testing
• Constitutional Convention Voting Tool QA testing
• Committee Election Result Auditing Process

Stake pool

• Running pre-prod
• Running preview-testnet
• Installation, verification, and checking of the new functionality provided in Cardano-node
• Installation, verification, and checking Mithril functionality
• Helping other not-so-familiar stake pool operators (SPOs)

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

We currently have some active budget proposals out that we would like to proceed with, but we need community support.

• Kuber IDE
• Autonomous Agent Testing SDK
• Cardano Test Wallet with Private Network Support

We hope the community sees the value of these proposals, as explained earlier, and will support them. We often get the feeling that the community is not well-informed about specific teams' contributions, and as a result, they follow the community sentiment, being supportive of the teams they have heard about. Dquadrant has been developing open source contributions on Cardano since 2019, and many of our open source contributions have had a direct impact on Cardano (successful hard forks, cryptographic primitives SECP256K1, constitutional convention voting, as well as governance and GovTool scalability and performance). All contributing to the success, quality, and security of Cardano) and the broader community.

We don’t develop solutions without a need, meaning we don’t waste ada from the treasury. What we develop is used to enhance the overall Cardano experience and can be reused in any future development project, not only by us but by any other development team on Cardano, since it is available as open source.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

The 4 Profit in our pool logo originated from the pool's previous name, ada4profit, A4PEU, and A4PUS (ada 4 profit for our delegators). This was transformed into JUNO since the majority of our delegators said it would have a negative impact on our stake, as it would be perceived that the pool would be making the majority of the profits for itself.

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To learn more about JUNO, visit the pool’s GitHub, development website, AI agent website, follow on X, or reach out on Telegram.

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.