Substrate

Gatotech is proud to serve several Substrate-based networks and to offer one of the best propositions to secure the nominated proof of stake economies of these communities.

A wee disclaimer: GATOTECH LTD only offers Information Technology services to institutional clients, i.e. the substrate-based networks, and it is implied that these services benefit the wider community. However, GATOTECH LTD does not offer retail or consumer level services. GATOTECH LTD is not registered with the UK Financial Conduct Authority and therefore does not advise, promote, arrange, deal, or make financial or investment transactions of any kind. All unsolicited deposits made to our accounts will be duly rejected and/or returned back to origin.

The Substrate Framework

Substrate is a framework, a collection of libraries written in Rust, that helps projects to develop their blockchains in a more structured and standardised way, releasing the teams from “inventing the wheel” and allowing them to focus in their differentiator technologies. More information can be found here.

Substrate was created incorporating important lessons from Ethereum, and proposes some major structural changes to overcome the limitations of the latter, like departing from Proof-of-Work and embracing the Proof-of-Stake strategy to choose the block producers, it is a true source of disruptive innovation and continuous improvement in the crypto industry and we at Gatotech are proud to support these efforts with our validator services. At the time of this publication, more than 150 projects are building on the Substrate framework.

Network setup

For our validators, we have a pair of bare metal dedicated servers contracted out from separate hosting providers in datacentres of London and Gloucester, United Kingdom; we also have a couple of smaller virtual private servers with another service provider in Düsseldorf, Germany, for monitoring / telemetry purposes which may benefit from a different geographic location.

The critical machines running the validators have some additional specifications on top of the networks suggested setup:

For the node in London, UK, the company OVH supplies us with their ADVANCE-3 (Gen 2) service:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X.
• Features: 12 cores, 24 threads, 3.7 / 4.8 GHz.
• Memory: 64GB ECC DDR4 3200 MHz.
• Storage: 2x 960GB NVMe disks with Soft RAID.
• Bandwidth: 1Gbps, unmetered traffic.
• Ubuntu Server 22.04.01 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish” edition.
• Provider subscribes to the Climate Neutral Data-Center Pact.
• ISO 50001 and ISO 14001 certificates pending.

For the node in Gloucester, UK, the company Fasthost supplies us with their Ryzen 7 Pro NVMe service:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 3700.
• Features: 8 cores, 16 threads, 3.6 / 4.4 GHz.
• Memory: 64GB DDR4 ECC RAM.
• Storage: 2 x 960GB NVMe disks with soft RAID.
• Bandwidth: 1Gbps, unmetered traffic.
• Ubuntu Server 22.04.01 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish” edition.
• 100% renewable energy from Ørsted.
• ISO 50001 certificate for energy management.

All nodes are running the most up-to-date binary files and the relevant RocksDB/ParityDB databases on the latest server systems, with security that has been substantially hardened, and with full monitoring and alert management in place.

Nominating your stake

The particulars of the nomination process will heavily depend on the wallet you choose to use, but all of these roughly follow the same basic steps:

1. Create your accounts (recommended: 1x controller and 1x stash) / remember to save and secure your keys!
2. Fund your accounts (a little funds in the controller, and all the rest in the stash!)
3. Bond your stash and connect to your controller account (so you don’t need the keys of your stash for the next steps).
4. Use your bonded funds to nominate all the validators you deem worthy (a mix of big names and smaller independent validators).
5. Relax for a couple of eras, then take your time to come back and evaluate if the set of validator you nominated are giving you the expected results.
6. Check your rewards and claim your pending payouts! (in case your validator is not doing that for you).
7. Update your set of validator as often as you consider appropriate, remember, staking is not a “set and forget” financial system.
8. Enjoy your returns!

And, in case of doubt, give us a shout!, we are here to help and fully available in the appropriate channels and in our “About us” page.

Our commitment!

We will claim all the payouts generated by our nominators’ stakes during our active eras. These payouts will be made every new era.

The commission we take for our validation services is calculated over the validating rewards only, remember that Substrate networks operate a “No gains, no fees” system, so the commission is only taken over the gains, if any (*). We commit to maintain at all times these fees within the range between 1% and a maximum of 15%, and the variation on the actual commission depending on the nature of the network, the pace of its block production and the exchange value of the relevant asset. Please understand that it is only thanks to these commissions that Gatotech can offset some of its expenses and upgrade the technology needed for a profitable and secure operation.

(*) Important note: if any validator starts behaving erratically or maliciously, their stash could be penalised (slashed) and the relevant nominations will be also slashed, so please choose your validators wisely! You can trust that Gatotech will do its best efforts to avoid that any of its stakes are slashed, ever!

A note on transparency

Being a relatively small and young company, Gatotech validator’s self stake is considerably composed of assets loaned from angel investors.

In regards of our known nominators, we have one of our Directors nominating her own personal stash in our validators, among others of their choice. Another important source of nominations is the Kusama’s Thousand Validators Programme and the Polkadot’s Thousand Validators Programme for which we thank the Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies for their continued trust.

Under the applicable programmes, our validator service adhere to the following best practices at all times:

• Valid on-chain identity, verified where possible.
• Connection to dedicated telemetry.
• Enough self-stake to prove ‘skin in the game’.
• No more than 15% commission.
• No more than 2 validators per network.
• Separate controller and stash accounts.
• Destination of rewards to the validator’s stake.
• Commitment to timely apply the latest software releases.

This list is also compatible with the values shared in the Validators’ Alliance Manifesto, which we agree with and are glad to support in a non-member capacity. You can trust that the Kusama, the Polkadot and the Aleph Zero networks and its economies will be in good hands while in GATOTECH’s operations.