Cardano SPO Column: Hodler Coalition [HODLR]

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool that is family-operated, running on 100% renewable energy and focused on realizing Cardano’s green blockchain potential: Hodler Coalition [HODLR].

Last week’s guest was a stake pool operated by a technology-driven and performance-focused group of IT professionals.

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.

Cardano SPO, interview with Hodler Coalition [HODLR]

Cardano SPO [HODLR] runs 100% on renewable energy

Hi, thanks for your time. Tell us something about your team, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

My name is Abe and with my siblings, Lauren and Ben, we run Hodler Coalition together. We’re based in the US (Ohio, Texas, and Michigan, respectively). We come from humble beginnings and each of us worked hard to get to where we are today. 

We went from making Subway sandwiches to software engineering, from mixing drinks to leading a design team, and from frying chicken wings to managing a healthcare business. We always manage to find success through grit and determination, and have brought these traits with us to Cardano! 

What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become Stake Pool Operators (SPO)?

Ben is the technical mind of our trio and had approached Lauren and I mid-2021 about working together on a project in crypto. 12 years ago a friend of Ben’s introduced him to BTC and it was only a passing curiosity for them at the time. 

Fast forward to 2010 and Ben had just finished his Computer Engineering degree and was eager to find bleeding edge fields to work in. He had researched options like AI, autonomous driving, quantum computing, and found that blockchain technology was the most likely candidate to be both impactful and disruptive. He identified Cardano as a technologically compelling platform that just so happens to have a soul 🙂. 

Through the end of 2021 we devoted our time to learning the platform, the requirements and responsibilities of being an SPO, exploring the community, and trying to figure out where we could contribute. 

Now, we see that blockchain, and Cardano specifically, is not just a financial system or a new version of the stock market, rather it is a missing and critical enhancement to most of the technologies we use today. We also find Cardano to be the most welcoming, inclusive, and optimistic blockchain space and we want to be a part of its future. 

Our goal is to leverage our talents towards the success of the platform. We found the first opportunity to participate was through being an SPO. But that is only our foundation and the potential is limitless, same as Cardano.

Let’s get technical, can you give an overview of the various parameters of the Cardano network of SPOs? What changes would you like to see and why?

The network parameters that are most impactful to SPOs and Delegators alike are: 

(k): which is intended to affect the number of pools in the network (k=desired pool) by limiting the size of any given pool. For example: an increase in k would decrease the max size, or better known as saturation, of any one pool (currently ~69 M ADA). Right now k=500 and we have 3205 pools! 

Fixed Fee: currently at 340 ADA minimum per block producing epoch per pool, this is a mandatory minimum fee taken out of rewards prior to distribution, and this is the single largest reason that small SPOs (less than 1 M ADA) are struggling to compete. Furthermore when this fee was set to 340 ADA the value of ADA/fiat was much lower. Now that it has risen so high it has created a perverse incentive for SPOs to do something known as “pool-splitting” where they will open many pools, even though none of them are anywhere near saturation, only to farm now lucrative epoch rewards which should be going to the delegators.

There has been a proposal to change (k) to 750 and the epoch fee to 30 ADA. We believe the ideal parameter changes would set the fixed fee to 0$, set a minimum variable fee percentage (3-5%) and k=1000. To be clear, we also support IOG’s proposed adjustments but feel that they do not go far enough to resolve the fee structure issues in the long term. 

The fixed fee has become out of alignment with the value of ADA/fiat and this will continue to cause issues as market fluctuations occur. Additionally it would simplify pool fee structure for delegators to one number 

We feel that any initiative that preserves decentralization, enhances performance and improves the Nakamoto coefficient is good for the platform.

We’ve covered many mission-drive stake pools in this column. What is your mission and how can people help?

Our mission is to reduce the carbon footprint of tomorrow’s distributed digital infrastructure while creating a more secure, equitable, and sustainable world. We think that the transformative power of Cardano’s blockchain technology can be leveraged to help turn back the climate crisis. 

To accomplish this we will implement use cases that impact the Cardano ecosystem positively, incentivise/prioritise carbon neutrality within the space, and contribute a portion of our fees directly to projects and charities that are impactful and climate focussed. 

We are committed to providing 20% of our fees to a climate related charity. Right now we are working with Carbon Neutral Cardano as a member with a project based in Madagascar and more details to come on that. Long-term we would like to continue to identify external partners whom we can onboard into Cardano and pursue joint projects with climate impact. 

Great contribution. Any final remarks? Where can people find you?

Check us out on Twitter and our beautiful website. We also have a Fund 8 Proposal submitted to build Lucem, a renewable-powered wallet, and any support or input there is greatly appreciated, you can find that on IdeaScale by searching “19600” (our idea number) or using this link. 

Finally, we’d like to thank the delegators we have and express our sincere gratitude for their support.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.