This week we will ask a couple of questions to an Italian SPO, Emanuele Concotelli, who operates the ADA SN₳KE POOL (ticker: SNAKE).
Last week the Cardano SPO Column had as guest the first female Stake Pool Operator Shweta Chachaun.
This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.
Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.
Ciao Emanuele, it’s great to have you here. Tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
Hello, I was born in Rome 45 years ago, but I have lived in Barcelona since 2006. Over the past 11 years, I have been working as a Business Intelligence consultant. My tasks are mainly related to Systems and Databases Administration, using different tools for analysis and reporting as well as providing support to various Developer Teams and End Users.
During the last year, I have been performing tasks like “daily global platform reporting”, which requires a strong capacity to report a consistent volume of information in less than one hour and a 45 minute conference call with teams from different world’s locations, to discuss the daily status and plan different kinds of actions.
Aside from my professional background, I have been cultivating a passion for open source systems since 2002.
Given your experience, can you explain what “open source” means and what are the pros and cons of it?
I started to learn and use Linux in 2002, there was that romantic idea to get free from closed source software, and to have a highly configurable and powerful system.
Pros, let’s take Cardano as an example, you don’t have to pay IOHK to use their amazing high engineering level software and set up a Stake Pool. Obviously there are maintenance costs like servers and websites, but the software licence is completely free.
I don’t see cons in Open Source systems, but for sure they require at least some basic operational knowledge.
By now most people know that Cardano uses Proof of Stake as its consensus mechanism, but certainly there are key differences with other PoS blockchains. What makes Cardano’s Ouroboros Proof of Stake Protocol superior?
I’m so focused on Cardano that I couldn’t provide a technical comparison between other Proof of Stake Blockchains (Polkadot, EOS, Tezos, etc).
I would invite the readers to have a look on https://cardano.org/ouroboros/ for a full explanation of the Cardano Ouroboros protocol.
One key difference is that Cardano is the only existing “Peer Reviewed” blockchain among the top capitalized crypto projects.
What are your responsibilities as an SPO and what does the future hold for ADA SN₳KE POOL?
On the technical side, the main responsibility is to keep a tuned stake pool even if you have few delegators. Since I like to do it, I spend several hours every day maintaining and monitoring my infrastructure. Responsibility towards Delegators is to keep them updated and well informed via SNAKE Pool Telegram Channel, even via direct messages.
ADA Snake Pool is an independent and single Cardano stake pool aiming for true decentralization. Member of SPA (Single Pool Alliance). The mission is to have the pool under saturation point and provide nice rewards for delegators. Missed blocks if any will be automatically paid out.
The pool will run charity projects once a certain amount of the pool’s stake is reached.
Side projects for the near future include:
- A web page to provide fine-grained Cardano Statistics
- An NFT Lab
- Smart Contracts.
Thank you for your contribution Emanuele. Do you have any closing remarks?
It has been a pleasure for me to answer your questions and talk about Snake Pool. I hope big ADA Delegators will start to delegate to small pools and realize that it is more profitable. I know a lot of competent guys/girls running Cardano Stake Pools.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOHK.
