One year ago today, I decided to open up a Cardano stake pool and I've ended up down a rabbit hole that I did not expect. My expectation was to simply start a pool, write a handful of articles about the pool and staking and watch the delegation come in. That was far from the reality of things.

Happy First Registration Day to ADAOZ

Cardano stake pool operations are far from what people may expect. There are the technical aspects of setting up and managing the stake pool but almost any well-versed server admin can run the software and get it to work.

We've seen ADAOZ start at its measly 4,000 ADA with my wallet balance and then grow over the initial month as team members came on to the team. I've seen the stake grow naturally from an 8M ADA to the crazy 67M during the SundaeSwap ISO.

What Did We Do to Become a Successful Cardano Stake Pool?

I'd like to say that the success of the stake pool was all due to hard work, but in reality, it was purely down to luck.

• It was lucky to have meet Linda Roland who helped pimp the pool in the early days and get us our first large delegate.
• It was lucky that the delegate stayed with us for months until we minted our first block.
• It was lucky to have come across a large whale that came on to join the team.
• It was lucky I did years of audio podcasting that I could channel into the Learn Cardano Podcast.
• It was lucky that so many people voted for us and other pool operators gave us votes to be a SundaeSwap ISO pool and that the SundaeSwap team decided to onboard the reserve wait list pools to distribute $SUNDAE tokens.
• It was lucky to have been picked as a Ardana Stake Pool Aliance member to distribute $DANA tokens.
• It was also very lucky that there are over 3000 dedicated delegates on the stake pool that want to support the goals and mission of the pool in creating educational and onboard content for users in the Cardano ecosystem.

I've been so lucky and grateful that I've met so many amazing people in the Cardano ecosystem that supported the things that we're doing.

Thank You to Our Cardano Stake Pool Community

The hardest part of gaining the delegation is gaining the trust and relationship of the delegate. In the end, the Cardano network is more than just a protocol for the blockchain. The people that hold ADA are the key to a successful stake pool. The stakeholders of the network are what makeup Cardano a protocol and as a community. Without all of the 3 million wallet holders of ADA in the community staking their ADA, the protocol would not work.

Thank you to all of our delegates for joining our pool and coming along with the journey.

If you want to learn how to start your own take pool, I suggest the official Cardano stake pool documentation on how to start and what to expect.

Presents for Our Cardano Stake Pool Delegates!

Aren't we supposed to get presents when it's our registration day?

We've been building a list of perks and extras for all of our delegates to our stake pool. Those that show dedication to the pool get little perks that they can unlock on our App website https://app.cardanode.com.au/. We've built this site using our CardanoPress plugin.

Once you've connected your wallet on the website, it can check to see how long you have delegated to our pool. You if meet the minimum requirements of 1 active epoch, that is you are in our pool for at least 3 epochs, then you can get access to all the perks.

• Access to our private Submit API. This allows you to connect to our own private server for delegates to submit transactions from Nami or CCVault.
• Earn $LRN tokens via DripDropz. $LRN tokens will allow for access to support and our Learning Management System & Courses.

We think that should be enough perks and presents for our delegates for now. This list will grow over time. Again we'd like to take all of the delegates to our Cardano Stake Pool ADAOZ.