What does it take to become a validator candidate? What was their motivation to become a validator? And what’s their prediction of the BSC future? Keep reading to get unique insights from CertiK, our next interviewed validator candidate.
Are you new to Binance Smart Chain or want to learn more about the role of validators and delegators on BSC? Read our article, A Journey to Decentralization: Validators & Delegators, for more on becoming a validator or delegator.
What is your core business, and what is your business strategy connected to being a validator?
We offer world-class security-oriented services to the entire blockchain industry, and we understand what the Binance Smart Chain enables from a protocol level. With the recent surge in DeFi, a vast majority of our clientele has originated from this growing segment. With other protocols not offering the most appealing foundation to build off at this moment, we see the Binance Smart Chain as a strong leader in what many of our eventual clients will be building on. By being tied into the ecosystem from a service side and validator ambitions, we’re able to truly be an advocate of the Binance Smart Chain from all angles.
How did you discover Binance Smart Chain?
As a trusted security partner with Binance, it was easy for us to find mutual synergies and dive deeper into the Binance Smart Chain along with its rapidly expanding ecosystem.
What’s your motivation for becoming a Binance Smart Chain Validator?
Becoming a validator within the Binance Smart Chain aligns with our company’s mission statement to bring security provisions to the greater blockchain ecosystem. How is that, you may ask? In the growing Proof of Stake landscape, validator operations are not only catered to securing the network with proper node infrastructure and security measures. They’re also about grassroots initiatives in expanding the protocol’s ambitions. By publicly expanding on the BSC mission with various fronts, we can expand on our vision to a grander scale.
What benefits do you see in being a validator?
As noted previously, the benefits come with interacting with the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem on a more intimate level. Becoming an advocate for the protocol is something we understand is the betterment of the entire DeFi ecosystem. While other protocols try to catch up with layer two solutions or extended development ambitions, BSC already delivers what many developing platforms may need now. Offering validator and ecosystem support to these pioneer Esq platforms is a priceless opportunity.
How did you set up your validator infrastructure?
We develop and maintain node infrastructure and hostings for CertiK Chain since Oct 2020, and CertiK Chain has been steadily running since then. As a software security company, we host Ethereum and BSC nodes to present the security leaderboard for communities with real-time and on-chain security insights on https://certik.org. All give us a good position to set up the validator infrastructure. We follow industry best practices to maintain a high level of robustness, availability, and scalability of the clusters to guarantee an extremely high percentage of liveness.
How do you engage with your community and attract more delegations?
We’ve yet to address the core logistics at this time for delegation campaigns internally but our entire engineering staff has significant experience in validator operations which brings us great confidence in our ability to attract more delegations within and outside our existing communities.
What did you learn from your experience with BSC? And what recommendations would you give new validators?
With extensive experience in validator operations, there weren’t any significant takeaways that we could note outside of being simplistic, and this was heavily due to the BSC team assisting along the onboarding process.
What do you envision for the BSC Validator community in the future?
We hope the current and future validators who’ll join the BSC Ecosystem will eventually understand what it means to be a true validator in a decentralized protocol. The strongest validator communities in the Proof of Stake landscape all share similar makeup in understanding that this role is beyond just setting up a validator and calling it a day. When you’re taking on the title, you’re also taking on a multifaceted role. This role comes with being a protocol ambassador, community builder, chain tooling developer, and just all-around advocate to the protocol. Some of the industry’s best validators provide things from wallets, explorers, publications, dashboards, and every tool you can imagine. It’s an exciting role to take on, and we hope those involved within the BSC ecosystem understand the severity of the role they now own.
