Cardano SPO: Cardano Blockhouse [CBH]

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool operated by Jochen who is working on several projects in the ecosystem and whose mission is to plant trees: Cardano Blockhouse [CBH].

Last week’s guest was a stake pool that is working on ALDEA, a DAO for Spanish speakers.

This initiative is a point of reference for everything Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano SPO Column, interview with Cardano Blockhouse [CBH]

Hi, thanks for your time. Tell us something about yourself, where are you based and what is your background?

Hi Patryk, thanks for this opportunity to introduce myself and my pool CBH! It is great to have a platform like this to let people know more about pools with potential to grow.

My name is Jochen and I’m living in the south of Germany. I’m working as an IT freelancer in my normal life handling lots of customer data every day. My background is computer science which I studied years ago.

What’s the path that led you to Cardano and to become a Stake Pool Operator (SPO)?

I got into crypto back in the year 2019. A colleague of mine convinced me that it is a good idea to invest in it. I bought my first bag of BTC and ETH. About one year later I became aware of Cardano and knew right away that the tech and the vision behind this blockchain is great. It took me only another month to make the decision to start my own pool as I am an IT guy. Contributing to the decentralisation of the Cardano blockchain by running a secure, stable and reliable staking pool using dedicated high end-hardware was the way to go for me. Another important point for me was selecting a datacenter which uses renewable energy.

But I soon realised that running a stake pool is not enough to be successful and to attract delegators. Marketing is the most important thing and as you can imagine this was worse for me as an IT guy. But anyway I got used to it and my pool is growing slowly but steadily.

You’ve been building a delegation center and a collectors portal, please tell us more. What projects are you collaborating with and what has been your experience when building on Cardano?

Tim Brückmann from IAMX asked me to join their team at the end of last year. I started to build the delegation center because there was a need to distribute the IAMX tokens to the delegators of the IAMX pools.This application went live in February and until now about 1400 transactions have been made by it. Users can view their current rewards and claim their tokens any time they want. 

Furthermore, the core elements of this delegation center have been reused and customised by me to be also used for the Mandala Metaverse. Cardano Blockhouse is also part of the Mandala Metaverse and a Turtle clan pool.

About 1 month ago I started to code a collectors portal as I’m a big fan of the Teddy Troops CNFTs and deeply involved in their community. Teddy holders can connect their wallets to show all Teddy Troops NFTs they have in their wallets. In addition to this list of NFTs, all traits are analysed and the user will see which traits he has in the collection and which not.

For sure there will be other new applications I’ll build.

You’re also involved in planting trees. Why is this important to you and what are your thoughts on our current state of the world as far as global warming is concerned? What can we do to help the environment?

We have to reduce our CO2 footprint as our actions leave traces on our planet. Our worldwide trees are one of the most important parts of the global carbon cycle. They are absorbing carbon dioxide by photosynthesis. 

It was very important for me to find a mission for my pool so that I could give something back to nature. The mission of Cardano Blockhouse is therefore reforestation and I’m using a part of my pool profits to plant trees worldwide through the German organisation primaklima.org. Until now 210 trees have been planted by me and hopefully there will be many more in the future. This will for sure be a lot easier if my pool grows and will mint blocks more often.

I’ve also joined the Climate Neutral Cardano alliance recently as this is a perfect fit to my pool’s mission.

Great contribution. Any final thoughts? Where can people stay in touch?

It would make me happy if more delegators would support smaller pools and would not hunt for the highest rewards. On a yearly time frame the rewards are mostly equal if you delegate to a small pool or a big pool. The decentralisation of the Cardano blockchain is the most important part to secure the network. It makes me sad to see lots of pools retiring every epoch. We all need them!

Please delegators: Support small pools! 

Feel free to contact me for more information about me, my pool, my mission and my contribution to the Cardano network.

And finally, please consider delegating some ADA at Cardano Blockhouse if you are looking for a new stake pool. Any small amount of delegated ADA is very welcome and would support my mission and my contribution to the Cardano network. Thanks in advance!

Find me on my Website, Twitter, Telegram and e-mail.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the SPOs are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG.