Since Fetch.ai is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain network, the essential task of maintaining the whole system and guaranteeing its security is entrusted into the “hands” of its validators. Additionally, validators are trusted with delegations by FET stakers of all sizes, which practically translates into increasing their voting power and, by extension, their influence over the network. Consequently, they become the keepers of the fragile balance between accumulating power while striving to make it as decentralized as possible for the health of the chain.
Unfortunately, these custodians of the protocol are usually shrouded in secrecy, and users often find it challenging to make an informed choice of whom to delegate their funds. To remedy that and create a space for Fetch validators to talk directly with our community, we initiated the Know Your Validator campaign.
Now, almost two years later, we are boosting transparency even further. We are launching a series of blog posts, each dedicated to one of our validating partners, so as to help you know them better.
Eight pieces from the series have already been published — check out our interviews with Blockscope.net, Posthuman.Digital, Staking Land, Stakewolle, Antrix, High Stakes, Active Nodes, and Inter Blockchain Services (IBS).
Below is the ninth one featuring the Crypto Lion team. Enjoy!
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Q: In a couple of sentences, introduce yourself and/or your organization and tell us where you are based.
Crypto Lion: The Crypto Lion team consists of 10 blockchain enthusiasts with different backgrounds based in Turkiye. We met in an ambassador program of a blockchain that uses the same technology Fetch.ai uses.
Within the team we have community experts, developers, DevOps engineers, designers, and marketers who actively work in global companies. We all love to follow innovations and be a bridge for the Turkish and global community. And hey, I’m Mevlut, an FS Web Developer. I will try my best to talk on behalf of my team here.
Q: What got you into the Web3/crypto space, and how long have you been in it?
Crypto Lion: As a team, we have been in the blockchain space since our early days as followers.
Personally, I started actively following the Web3 space in 2021. I am especially interested in the new technologies born after Ethereum, with focus on PoS mainly. I have recently been accepted into a wonderful program and am very excited about it — it is aimed at developers and it tackles how blockchain solves the modern problems we have all faced and helps us to better understand the basics behind the ecosystem.
Q: Tell us your story about how and when you became a validator on the Fetch.ai Network. How did you first hear about Fetch.ai?
Crypto Lion: The story of Crypto Lion started 2 years ago when I became an ambassador at one of the Turkish blockchain communities. There was an incentivized testnet running competition and since I had knowledge of running the infrastructure on open-sourced distributions, I joined. At the end of the contest, our team decided to run a mainnet validator.
One year later, we started to provide validating services to other blockchain networks. The first one we chose was the Fetch.ai Network. We had heard about the project from the AI community on social media and got excited about it. After a bit of researching we found out that Fetch.ai is using the same blockchain technology we had experienced before. The following day our validator was already initiated and started giving services to the users of the chain. :)
Q: Have you participated in Fetch testnets?
Crypto Lion: In the early days, we were running validators on testnets, but we gave it a break in order to migrate to better server infrastructure. Soon we will serve testnet validators on all the chains we are on.
Q: What commission do you offer FET holders as a delegation incentive?
Crypto Lion: For a long time, we did not ask for commission from our delegators. However, after the Fetch.ai validator community took action on Discord to deliver a better decentralization, we discussed it internally and decided to move from 0% to 5%, which we believe will be the minimum commission on the chain. We don’t have any plans to change it in the near future.
Q: Have you participated in governance discussions and voted on any of the governance proposals?
Crypto Lion: Yes, we love to share our ideas on FIPs and think that the Fetch.ai team loves to hear our and investors’ voices. Which is very valuable.
Q: Are you running (or planning to run) any ecosystem features such as seed nodes, client RPC endpoints, block explorers, or a DApp?
Crypto Lion: Indirectly yes. We have operators for the Restake App — Restake allows delegators to auto-compound with the help of the Authz module of the chain software. Basically, stakers give specific permission for their rewards to be restaked on their behalf for a time period. Here is our Fetch.ai Operator.
We also forked an open-sourced and Apache-licensed wallet repo. We have plans to develop it for our stakers and add features like giving first-hand support, auto-compounding service etc.
Q: Please describe your involvement as a validator or in any other development work in the overall Web3 ecosystem.
Crypto Lion: When we first started the validating service, we developed an open-sourced basic web wallet for staking purposes and embedded it on our main website via CosmJS. One year later, several nice web wallets were published and some security concerns showed up. We decided to take it down and make new plans for the future. We archived the repo but it is still accessible on our GitHub page.
Apart from that, we join discussions and provide comments and suggestions on ongoing applications. Our team members love explaining new apps and use cases to the Turkish community on social media channels like Telegram or Discord. Some of them love the NFT community too and participate in running giveaways and providing support across the whole ecosystem.
Q: Which is your favorite DApp and why?
Crypto Lion: We think this is a hard question because a lot of amazing ideas help us.
The blockchain and AI is a good combination and we love how the technology touches people’s daily life and helps the globe for a better environment.
Our favorite DApp is MOBIX on Fetch.ai Network. 💚 MOBIX encourages people to use green vehicles for daily life needs and it is very exciting to think about how AI could help this project implement innovative features.
In general, we love specific use cases like IBC. The bridge apps and liquid staking apps are our favorites, like Osmosis for instance. 💜 Also, we think that decentralized finance has a big potential on the game field: The Sandbox.
Q: What are your plans for the coming 5 years?
Crypto Lion: We will continue to keep the pulse of the community on social media both locally and globally. The most important milestone for us is to provide validating services on flag bearer chains in the IBC space. To achieve this, our first plan is to focus on getting in active sets on these chains via our income.
Our humble roadmap was announced on social media and we want to stick with it. We already designed a magnificent new logo and we are developing a brand-new cross-chain validator website. Soon the first step on our roadmap will be completed. We are happy about it.
We also have a bunch of tools that could be useful for validators about monitoring, statistics, and information. We are planning to make them open-sourced in the near future.
Q: Is there something you would like to share with our community?
Crypto Lion: Yes :) Please give a chance to the validators who have fewer tokens staked on, but have potential. You can also help and encourage them by following them on social media.
Our focus will always be the same: delivering as secure and reliable services as possible with a minimum commission.
I would like to thank you for reading this far and the Fetch.ai team for giving us the mic.
Q: How can our community members reach out and contact you? Please share your website and/or social media profiles.
Crypto Lion: Sure, this is the top part of the cake :)
You can say hi to us via email. This is our website. We are mostly active on Twitter, Discord, and Telegram. Here are Keybase and our GitHub as well.
