SPOs - focus groups

Quotes

🏗️ Running a Node & User Experience

“Installation is pretty easy if you're already familiar with it... We got used to the pain points.” — Richard McCracken

“Voting is not difficult if you are proficient, but it is still risky and labour intensive.” — Richard McCracken

“If it was just one-shot path — cold, hot, you're done — it would be better.” — Richard McCracken

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⚖️ SPO Incentives & Sustainability

“Profitability needs to stay above cost. It’s literally that simple.” — Zachary Soesbee

“We need more balance so it becomes sustainable to run one all the time, rather than just in the good markets.” — Zachary Soesbee

“There's a negative feedback loop right now — fewer stakers mean fewer rewards emitted, which makes people want to stake less.” — Ryan (Cerkoryn)

“Rapid decline in staking rewards that has occurred over the last four years… rewards are dropping faster than LAOs can be deployed.” — Richard McCracken

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💸 Attracting Delegators & Business Challenges

“How do you get delegators to join a stake pool? They have to want to buy ADA, then they have to want to stake it.” — Richard McCracken

“There’s a reason why 45% of ADA is sitting on exchanges — because people don’t want to be locked into staking.” — Richard McCracken

“Acquiring a single user is almost not worth any marketing budget.” — Andrew Westberg

“We need to make it easy to find pools, and make it easy for new pools to grow.” — From user notes 【User message】

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🔄 Parameters & Protocol Improvements

“Get rid of min pool cost, set min margin — that’s a really good idea.” — Richard McCracken

“Anything to improve delegator rewards is best. That’s the focus.” — Richard McCracken

“We need to be able to rapidly iterate — if it doesn't work, you need a perfect regression plan.” — Richard McCracken

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🛰️ Network Resilience & Infrastructure

“Bare metal at home because it’s more cost-effective. But it’s a little more maintenance.” — Richard McCracken

“I run bare metal at home but with cloud failover.” — Andrew Westberg

“Cloud is good for block propagation but not great for decentralization — it’s good to have a mix.” — Andrew Westberg

“Maybe bare metal will become even more cost-effective because you don’t get charged for traffic.” — Andrew Westberg

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🚀 New Business Models & Partnerchains

“Partnerchains could be a business opportunity — but they can be a vampire attack on L1 if not designed with a feedback loop.” — Andrew Westberg & Richard McCracken

“Staking is competing directly with the dApps on Cardano. If staking rewards are too attractive, people won’t use dApps.” — Andrew Westberg

“One day the SPO benefits, the next day the dApp benefits — there needs to be a rhythm to it.” — Zachary Soesbee

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🧑‍💻 Future Node Improvements

“Maybe we should think about compiling the node with just basic stuff — every new feature adds potential bugs and attack surface.” — Martin Lang

“Keep it simple — startup flags rather than compile flags where possible.” — Richard McCracken