Cardano SPO Column: Metro Mermaids [TAILS]

This week’s guest on the Cardano SPO Column is a stake pool investing in the future of the planet by undertaking and implementing environmental action and education and contributing to the improvement of our earth’s ecosystem: Metro Mermaids [TAILS].

Last week’s guest was a stake pool that uses the margin fee to invest in the Kurdish community.

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, interview with Metro Mermaids [TAILS]

Greetings, happy to have you here. Tell us something about yourselves, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

Shellutations, thank you for having us! We are a husband and wife team running stake pool TAILS based out of Metro Detroit, Michigan. 

Fredrovicius is a developer and has worked in the technology industry for over 3 decades, MermADA is a website developer with over 2 decades experience and is also a professional mermaid.

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

I (MermADA) was organizing a beach clean up and researching options to grow our efforts and make a bigger impact for the great lakes. Fredrovicius had been trying to talk crypto in general with me for a while and mentioned I might be able to do more for the environment with Cardano’s stake pool option. 

There was a bit of a learning curve in general as I was completely new to the ecosystem, however once I saw that other married duos and environmentally focused projects where diving in and making an impact for their causes I was like okay, let’s do this! On February 26th 2021 we started our stake pool.

You donate part of the pool’s revenue to the Coral Restoration Foundation, please tell us more about this. Why this organization in particular?

We all know water is essential to life and I knew being a mermaid I wanted to pick something that impacted our water ecosystem. When it came to choosing a charity to donate to I wanted to find an organization that was forthcoming about information and communicative with us. We originally donated to 2 charities and over our first year dealing with both, Coral Restoration Foundation stood out time and again.

They have been helpful with the amount of knowledge and education they share about the work they are doing both in the research labs and the Florida reef ecosystem. From Friday Field Updates to collaborative research projects, community educational events and their frequent newsletter, they make it easy for our delegators to stay up to date & provide opportunities for real world involvement. We have also been able to establish a rapport with their team and are discussing ways we can further collaborate to continue helping their project.

You’re also offering an NFT minting tool, how does it work? And speaking of NFTs, how do you view the current NFT landscape on Cardano?

We actually offer several minting tools and services.

Our single NFT Mint tool has been refined to 6 steps:

1. Name your NFT & Ticker (your NFTs internal chain name)
2. Enter your receiving address
3. Add additional details in the optional fields, from Rarities and Social Media Contacts to Video or 3D objects
4. Upload your image
5. Check Policy Details
6. Click Create NFT

Once payment is sent it can take up to an hour to receive depending on chain load.

Our Mint 20 tool functions the same way; we also offer a royalty and token tool. Our NFT services include NFT vending machines, token faucets and project development.

In my opinion (MermADA) Cardano’s NFT landscape is still in the maritime stage – weak rules, few sheriffs, lots of outlaws. Our ecosystem is still so new that it hasn’t had time to develop like other chains that have had NFTs for a while now. Doing your research and not investing more than you can afford to lose has never been more important, however as a creator I think now is 1000% the time to jump in and create your name for yourself.

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

Thank you so much for having us! It’s been an incredibly humbling experience swimming in the Cardano community, and we are looking forward to continuing to see where this journey leads! Anyone who would like to get in contact can find us hanging out with our pool community in our Telegram Group!

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