A Review of Launchnodes
Introduction
The year is 2021 and we are in the middle of the biggest cryptocurrency bull run in the last 5 years. Everyone and their mother’s are looking to get involved in one way or another, but this time around the users are more sophisticated and looking to maximize their opportunities by exploring the wide world of staking. Staking is a concept that has really matured over the last few years, since the days where projects like Peercoin and NEO were some of the only to choose from. We have seen industry leaders emerge like Tezos and Cardano but both have failed to capture the smart contract network effect that Ethereum has.
To really understand staking we can start by comparing proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Proof-of-work consensus mechanisms like the ones currently used for Bitcoin and Ethereum consist of large mining farms that are competing against each other using large amounts of energy and computing power to guess right and be awarded the opportunity to mine the next block and thus get the block reward. This process is extremely inefficient and requires a large amount of energy and results in a lower throughput then what is needed for mass adoption of transactions. With proof-of-stake the process of guessing right is removed and instead your chance of winning the right to mine the next block is determined by your ratio of percent staked to the total weight of staked tokens in the network. For example if you had 1 % of all computing power in a POW blockchain you would have a 1% chance of winning the rights to mine the next block, with POS you can own 1% of tokens being staked compared to total tokens staked and you will have that same 1% chance of winning the rights to mine the next block. POS is more efficient then POW as it uses far less energy to get to the goal of determining who has the rights to mine the next block and obtain the block reward.
Proof-of-stake is popular with enthusiasts and investors alike because it’s a relatively easy way to earn a yield by delegating your coins to a provider and sitting back collecting rewards. Take it a step further and you’ll see that running a node for a POS network is far easier and cheaper to maintain than running a node for a POW chain. You may ask yourself, I really wish Ethereum was POS and how can I run my own node for this? Well let us first introduce ETH 2.0 and next the easiest and most secure way to setup your ETH 2.0 node with Launchnodes.
Ethereum 2.0, also called Eth2 or “Serenity”, is the next upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum 2.0 will be released in multiple “Phases” starting in 2020 with Phase 0. Each phase will improve the functionality and performance of Ethereum in different ways. This is the process of Ethereum upgrading its network to POS while simultaneously adding in scalability features.
What is Launchnodes?
Now that you know a little bit about the difference between POW and POS you can see from a surface level that POS is the better way to go. You are also probably getting excited that the blockchain with the biggest network effect, Ethereum, is transitioning to POS and you probably want to find out how you can run your own ETH 2.0 node. Introducing Launchnodes, they provide you with a secure, always on Beacon and Validator node on Ethereum 2.0 mainnet, using the latest versions of the Prysmatic clients.
Launchnodes provides you a fully secure Beacon or Validator node running on Ethereum 2.0 mainnet, that allows you to stake your Ethereum and keep all the returns. Launchnodes spins up pre-configured, secure nodes inside your own AWS account, so you can own and run your own Beacon and Validator nodes and start staking.
This solves the issue of needing the technical knowledge for ETH 2.0 node setup. Let this all-in-one concierge service do all the hard work for you and set up your Beacon or Validator Node in your own AWS account so you can focus on running other areas of the business.
What is the Launchnodes Mission?
Launchnodes mission is to provide customers with a straightforward, direct connection to the most important public blockchain, without taking a share of the staking returns earned.
This concierge service is extremely important considering the high amount of interest in staking ETH in the ETH 2.0 network. Having a full-service setup like Launchnodes also contributes to a more decentralized validator environment by lowering the barrier of technical knowledge required to set up your own ETH 2.0 validator.
The strategy is clear, Launchnodes makes staking directly easy by providing a concierge service to set up nodes for people and organizations that want to stake Ethereum, but don’t know anything about using cloud, the command line interface or how to generate keys. They give people and organizations the ability to completely overcome the technical hurdle for staking directly.
The team at Launchnodes is embarking on a noble journey to give power back to the people. Allowing people, organizations and communities to run nodes and stake directly without anybody else taking custody of their ETH or passwords and keys maximizes the money they can make. The nodes run in the customers AWS account, they own their Ethereum, they don’t need to trust anybody or give any of their returns away. The Launchnodes fees for the set up are low, fixed and a one-off cost. The annual cost of running a validator node including the Launchnodes software and the AWS instance costs is $610 a year. This is much cheaper than going with an alternative setup and having to learn all the technical requirements of setting up your node.
Is the service scaleable?
Launchnodes’ services are designed to be easy, scalable and secure, leveraging public cloud such as AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Utilizing the cloud is a brilliant way to scale the amount of nodes and the ease of integrations that the Launchnodes team can facilitate.
What does success look like?
The Launchnodes team has very lofty yet attainable goals of 100,000 nodes setups with 90,000 customers. They aim to serve not only exchanges, fintech organizations, and people in the industry already but also want to make it easy for engineering teams to build highly resilient architectures with the advantage of removing all technical hurdles to staking. By providing this end to end hand holding service they take great pride in onboarding node customers who are not traditional crypto stakeholders and getting as many involved as possible.
Who are the Team Members of Launchnodes?
Getting to know the team behind a company is a very important step in trusting their services. The Launchnodes founding team is comprised of Jaydeep Korde, Rajesh Sinha, Peter Patsalides and Yash Bhavsar. They have built useful working software and put it into production for governments, banks and global corporates for the past 20 years at Thoughtworks, Goldman Sachs, Accenture and for the British government to name just a few of the organisations their team has worked for. Launchnodes is 100% privately owned and self funded. They are keen to work and grow with the right partners and eco-systems.
The team were early investors in BTC and Ethereum and active members of the development community. Launchnodes is passionate about widening participation in staking from as many different organisations as possible to explore the different business models that can emerge based on staking and defi solutions.
At the time of writing, Launchnodes has deployed $13 million USD of nodes onto the ethereum network. Needless to say, this is quite impressive growth!
The team is obsessed with learning about what makes it easy for more people to stake Ethereum directly and building services and runways to allow people to do that. People often say that crypto speaks its own language, they want to translate the merits of staking and how to participate for everyone.
Community
Looking to follow Launchnodes on social media, follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and on YouTube. These guys are always active on Twitter and make for a great follow, so be sure to check them out and provide interactions!
Summary & Conclusion
Ok so now you’re convinced, you want to run your own ETH 2.0 node setup from Launchnodes, so what’s next?
The concierge service is brought to users through the AWS Marketplace, a single click gets the process started and then you need to book a 30 minute session with the Launchnodes technical team who will onboard you and have your nodes running and in the queue ready to start staking. Beaconcha.in and Beaconscan.com give customers the ability to build dashboards that show them what they are earning everyday, with 1 or 10000 nodes. The ecosystem which includes www.stakingrewards.com around staking is awesome and has incredible potential.
So what are you waiting for, get started today by clicking HERE!