xDai Chain (Gnosis Chain)

BootNode has submitted an official proposal to become an xDAI validator: https://forum.poa.network/t/bootnode-as-an-xdai-validator/6648

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Hello, xDAI community,

This is Manuel, CEO of BootNode. We would like to reintroduce ourselves to the xDAI ecosystem by proposing to become validators.

Why “get back”? Because many of the BootNode team are former Protofire employees who decided to co-found and create their own company. I was the C*O at Protofire who kicked off and managed many projects contributing to the POA Network since 2018. From the Token Wizard and dApps for governance to the AMB bridge smart contracts.

I contributed to the decision to join the xDAI network as a validator right after DevCon 4 at Prague (2018) becoming the 2nd validator who also helped onboard Giveth and MakerDAO. We were a group of 4 validators for a long time.

We not only participated in the key infrastructure development, we also served as xDAI ambassadors, giving talks about xDAI at conferences and even organizing a ‘Burner Wallet’ like event introducing xDAI to new users and early adopters.

I also participated in governance from day one until I left Protofire a couple of months ago. This time frame spans from the old multisig to the last Gnosis Safe multisig (which by the way engineers from our team contributed to its development and porting to xDAI).

Why BootNode Even though BootNode was only founded 2 months ago, we are a strong team that has been contributing to the blockchain ecosystem (mainly Ethereum) for over 3 years.

We provide human capital investment into carefully selected projects, generating an unprecedented alignment of interests and incentives.

We have contributed to the most important projects in the ecosystem granting us access to their technology, people, governance, and resources.

We are a highly experienced cross-functional team of managers, analysts, researchers, engineers, and graphic designers who also have access to a strong advisor network.

Our motivation Our team has been part of the xDAI ecosystem since day 1, providing security to the network and its adoption by many important projects. We would love to keep doing it.

BootNode aims to bootstrap a self-sustainable, production-grade network and bridge validator. Also, we aim to provide support to the community as well (help other validators and projects evaluating xDAI as their network) and increase STAKE delegation by attracting token holders to stake in our node.

Having BootNode run a validator will help xDAI achieve higher network decentralization by having an experienced team at BootNode running another production-grade validator. This will result in helping increase adoption and, therefore, adding value to the STAKE token.

Our Proposal We would like to ask the community to approve the delegation of 20K of non-removable STAKE from the ecosystem fund to bootstrap a self-sustainable, production-grade validator node. As it is non-removable, BootNode won’t be able to rug-pull.

Even though the required stake for incoming validators will be decreased from 20K to 2K ( and EIP-1559 is coming to xDai - EIP-1559 - xDai), we want to run a self-sustainable and profitable validator and have the independent resources to grow the operation and contribute to xDAI as needed. We want to support xDai’s growth and will pursue membership on the Bridge Governance Board as well as committing to run a bridge node. Our prior experience with xDai governance and node operation gives us a unique opportunity to quickly onboard and contribute immediately to the ecosystem.

The delegated 20k STAKE we are requesting can’t be sold by design. However, the rewards from the 20k STAKE are distributed to ALL participants of the network who are either delegating or staking. This proposal will benefit everyone protecting the network.

Who vouches for BootNode? We are happy to have amazing investors and advisors who helped BootNode spring to life. They come from the most important and strategic projects in the Ethereum ecosystem and have extensive knowledge that can help us realize our goals.

• Patricio Worthalter (Founder of POAP. Migrated to xDAI)
• Gnosis Ltd (Partnered with xDAI as an investor and brought to xDAI their product suite: Gnosis Protocol, a top-ten Ethereum DEX by volume; Gnosis Safe Multisig, a wallet holding more than $1 Billion in assets; and the Conditional tokens framework, built on by prediction markets Omen and Polymarket) https://blog.gnosis.pm/gnosis-protocol-and-xdai-partnership-1de0e48fb14b
• Synthetix VC
• Mariano Conti (former Head of Smart Contracts at Maker)
• Eric Conner and Anthony Sassano (ethHub co-founders_
• Ryan Sean Adams (Bankless founder)
• Peter Pan (Metacartel Ventures member) And a few more.

What we do Development We have contributed to many organizations building blockchain projects, from ideation and validation to mass adoption. We are an interdisciplinary team that applies proven methodologies and innovative technologies, covering the complete process of bringing a new or existing product to market.

• Protocol and architecture design and specs
• Integration and usage of existing battle-tested Ethereum components/legos (oracles, AMMs, multi-sigs, lending/borrowing, DAOs, governance, and much more)
• UI design and dApp development
• Bots, relayers, and backends
• The Graph Protocol Subgraphs
• SDKs and reference implementations
• Cross-chain integrations
• Ecosystem and dev adoption through grants programs design
• Staking/validation infrastructure Our engineers have participated in some of the strongest projects developed on Ethereum, exposing us to nearly all of the composable components within the ‘money legos’ framework. Due to this, we can help teams build on top of or integrate with any of them.

Decentralized Infrastructure and Staking Services We help to bootstrap decentralized infrastructure, networks, and protocols by running services such as validators, bridges, and indexers. In addition to receiving rewards for helping secure and scale these services, we also contribute additional value such as automation scripts, reference setups for monitoring and scaling, bots, dashboards, and more.

Team + Experience Founded by a team of engineers with an average of 10+ years of experience building and shipping highly available and scalable software for many industries. More importantly, our team has 3+ years of blockchain ecosystem experience mainly in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Our team has participated in helping build some of the most important projects in the Ethereum ecosystem:

• AAVE
• Ocean Protocol
• Opyn
• AragonDAO
• Kyber Network
• POA Network
• xDAI network and bridges
• Synthetix
• MakerDAO
• The Graph Protocol
• Set Protocol
• Gnosis Safe wallet and Gnosis Auction
• dxDAO Omen Prediction Market, DutchX, and Fairdex Exchange
• Curve Finance
• Chainlink (our team helped bring Chainlink Oracles into xDAI)