Cardano SPO Column: NANI Pool [NANI]

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool operated by a very active member in the Cardano community, contributing with several initiatives like Yifu Pedersen NFTs, Catalyst proposal “The Great Filter” and the Cardano 720 YouTube channel: NANI Pool [NANI].

Last week’s guest was a mission-driven stake pool operating in support of TotaLife.org.

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 NANI Pool [NANI]

Hey, awesome to have you here. Please introduce yourself, what’s your background and where are you based?

Hi! In Cardano I’m best known as LeadTimeNull AKA your favorite coffee cup

I have a background in DevOps and Build Engineering, with a specialty in game development infrastructure, where I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to participate in multiple prominent AAA game titles. I’ve been living all over Europe and currently I’m living near London in the UK. 

What’s your Cardano story and why did you become a Stake Pool Operator (SPO)?

I began my crypto venture in the beginning of 2020, and what drove me to Cardano was actually the hordes of toxic slanderous troll comments on YouTube and articles. I figured that if all of these loud people are kicking up such a fuss about this project, one of two things must be going on: 

1. Cardano’s a genuinely a scam, in which case I need to know this for sure, so I can keep my money out of it. 
2. Cardano’s plans are so ambitious and disruptive that even the people in the general crypto community don’t see the forest for the trees, in which case I need to know this for sure, so I can get all my money into it.

I think it’s self evident which of the two I found to be the truth, once I had finished reading the open source code and whitepapers. 

I became an SPO to help strengthen the decentralisation of the network. It’s a tough gig, even with DevOps experience, and I am definitely not earning a profit with the current size of my pool, but that’s okay. I want to do what I can to help strengthen the network. We still have a bumpy road ahead of us before we reach the adoption we are aiming for as a network.

You’re the Tech Lead at Yifu Pedersen. Can you tell us more about this NFT project?

Yifu Pedersen is a jewelry business I am running along with my business partner, @BullishDumpling. We create hand made, customized jewelry with high end quality materials, and use Cardano to issue immutable proof of ownership and authenticity for every piece on the blockchain. It’s extremely difficult and expensive to get certification if you buy jewelry from a high street store, and if you do, you often get a blanket authenticity from their local- or inhouse gemologist. We thought; “We can do better than that”.

Provenance becomes extremely important if you ever want to resell your fine jewelry, and if you don’t have proof of authenticity, you’ll need to move heaven and earth to get experts to evaluate it. With all certificates minted on the blockchain as a sovereignly controlled NFT, there is no need for any such trouble. The buyer can choose to insist that they get the certificate NFT along with the physical piece, to prove that the piece is genuine – removing the need for third party involvement entirely.

Other than our customized pieces, we have created a small limited series to celebrate what Cardano has done for both of us: It’s a collection of 18k gold plated Cardano symbol pendants, we have named our “Lovelace Genesis” series. We have auctioned 9 of them to this date, and will be auctioning the remaining 16 pieces through 2022.

You’ve also been active with Project Catalyst. In a few words, tell us what Project Catalyst is and describe your proposal.

Project Catalyst is a bootstrap project, led by IOG, for Cardano’s self-governance. Anybody can write up proposals for what they’d like to see/do that would benefit the blockchain and community. Then all ADA holders can vote on the proposals they like the most, and the ones that receive the most support will receive their requested funding from Cardano’s treasury. 

Through Catalyst, I am leading a funded proposal called The Great Filter (TGF). TGF aims to help smoothen the voter user experience, and provide a helpful framework to inexperienced proposal authors. We have designed an open source filter protocol that we use to analyse and compile a list of proposals that only contains those with all relevant information needed for a voter to make a fully informed evaluation of the proposal. 

This is to solve the challenge of having thousands of proposals every quarter – much more than any regular voter can be expected to keep up with. Add to that the fact that the majority of submitted proposals fails to account for critical project management information needed for any mature proposal. With voter’s time being spread thin enough as it is, The Great Filter aims to help by creating an easy and transparent way for the voters to only have to spend time reading the proposals that are worthwhile from a project management perspective.

The people behind TGF are: Bullish Dumpling (FIKA Pool), Eva Ginger (GINGR Pool) and yours truly (NANI Pool).

Thank you kindly for your time. Any final words? Where can people stay in touch?

Check out my latest Cardano music video if you want a good laugh! 

Tune into Cardano720 every month, two days after Cardano360 for a live review of technical news in Cardano with my partner Alex from NASEC Pool and yours truly.

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

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