Promoting security & sovereignty into a bright future with Cardano
Since October 2023, and for several periods going back through 2020, COSD Pool has maintained the prestige and operational support of a Cardano Foundation delegation, awarded for exceptional contributions to Cardano and confirming our pool's consistency and profitability:
2023-10-30: Announcing the stake pools chosen for October 2023
These Cardano contributions are rooted in the pool founder Robert Phair (@rphair)'s long time work in the CIP (Cardano Improvement Proposals) process.
As the longest-term CIP editor to date, Robert is also the original author of the CIP Wiki which provides a complete introduction to Cardano standards, how they are agreed upon, what CIP editors do, and why these standards are important to Cardano's value, stability, and market share:
Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs): Wiki
By delegating to COSD stake pool, you assure further support for this standards process as well as stake pool operator representation in Cardano's growing body of technical standards: therefore helping maintain long term quality and asset value for Cardano itself.
For more about the CIP process as supported by COSD, continue here:
Not only will your delegation yield some of the highest returns of Cardano stake pools (as shown at the explorer links below), it will also support a process that accumulates and strengthens Cardano standards for our blockchain itself as well as NFTs, dApps, peer-to-peer governance and more... and bolsters the raw value of your Ada in both the present and future.
See COSD statistics on AdaStat … or official Cardano Explorer
Delegate to COSD from pool.pm + supported wallet
Mission Statement
By doing more with less, to keep Cardano sustainable for everyone… see our foundation story below for our commitment to prove that Cardano Stake Pool excellence is possible on "Third World" budgets no matter what part of the world we might be living in.
Basic info & contacts
- 1% pool margin
- ₳340 epoch fixed fee
- Email (preferred): pool@cosd.com
- Cardano Forum: @COSDpool
- Telegram: @COSDpool
Follow us on Twitter: @COSDpool
Pool configuration
- Hosts in NYC area and Nürnberg, Germany behind VPC firewalls. Servers with simple, robust architecture designed to quickly retask and rebuild in response to network outage or security threats.
- Pool resources managed only from security hardened Linux desktops with encrypted off-site backup, with all keys managed on our signature cold key management environment, the Frankenwallet.
Technical qualifications
- Robert Phair - CV (systems architect with 30 years in security, design & devops, having vast & diverse experience in small to enterprise UNIX operations)
OUR STORY: Economics, environmental friendliness and sustainability
We started with nothing but a pledge, and will always run on a low budget.
Our original configuration of 3 systems (one block producer and two relay nodes), with memory and CPU cycles to spare, in 2020 cost US$0.66 per system-day for a total daily budget of $2 which made our configuration achievable by operators across the lowest economic sectors in the world (and still does, through other providers). From our August launch through the end of 2020 our total operating cost was $205 (in addition to an incalculable amount of work, having an unguessable labour cost).
We began with a DigitalOcean $100 coupon (a referral link: these days it's $200, last checked 2024-11-21), which would provide enough time for operators to prove the feasibility of their pool and (with the right marketing plan) attract delegation within their communities or from institutional supporters of their professional, financial, geographical, social or ethnic qualities.
UPDATE 2023-07-24: In keeping with the above cost model — while staying ahead of the expanding requirements of the Cardano node & chain — our re-hosted and equally secure, reliable & well-connected infrastructure is based on a European provider (not Contabo, thank you!) providing the same excellence at a total budget of €3 per day. 😇
We are entirely Virtual, as opposed to Physical: for a clean environmental footprint.
Our cloud-only configuration gives us the same efficiency and environmental friendliness as most others that are entirely cloud-based, especially compared to pools constructed from local hardware. The term "bare metal" commonly used as a marketing catch phrase implies physical resources, energy consumption, redundant home broadband connection & equipment, and manufacturing overhead (i.e. ultimately unreclaimable environmental waste) far in advance of the slice of cloud resources that it actually takes to run a competitive Cardano node network entirely via the Internet.
The cloud approach also implies zero (or near zero) local power consumption, office space, transportation expenses, and environmental office waste. Our pool was created from an eco-friendly management console (Dell Optiplex 980 Eco): a low-energy model, still in service 10 years after its manufacture in 2010 (update: we retired it at the end of 2021), still running efficiently & securely thanks to Linux installation and SSD upgrades.
And our Frankenwallet installation (first implemented itself on an 8 year old SATA HD cast off as rubbish) has made it unnecessary to procure a second machine for secure stake pool & pledge key generation and storage (as all Cardano stake pools are still advised to do in official documentation). This DIY security platform (also saving any cost of a "hardware wallet") assures that stake pool operation remains accessible to habitual travellers, expatriates, and village communities with limited materials, space, energy, and funds.
Our model is reproducible in low-tech countries.
The region of Asia from where we operate is subject to frequent power and Internet interruptions, so founding & maintaining the COSD pool with total availability here has helped establish that Cardano nodes & stake pools don't need Western style fast broadband and perfect electrical power to run. There is a further argument that perfect power and Internet themselves cannot ultimately be sustainable... at least not for everyone in all countries and at all economic levels. In the meantime we are proving every day that our model can be used by the world's most environmentally and economically challenged who wish to run their own Cardano stake pools and blockchain businesses.