PANL Pool
“Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don't talk about it; they are the ones who make a community live.”
― Jean Vanier
What is it about Cardano? Why do so many of us feel (insert your favorite word here: driven, empowered, motivated, engaged) to spend so much of our free time creating and building on this network? At the moment my answer is community. Sometimes its charity. Other times its technology or financial freedom. But today, its definitely community. Why? A rather unusual thing happened the other day in that I was asked to write a blog about Ryan and PANL pool. The interesting bit is that the request came from someone else, a disinterested third party if you will. When I started asking questions, the community response was resoundingly positive about PANL’'s contribution to the Cardano ecosystem, the xSPO and, of course, the Freeloaderz project. So positive, in fact that I felt compelled to include several quotes here:
Sean with ENVY said:
Ryan and the other guys from PANL pool are some of the kindest and most selfless people in this space. He runs the SMASH servers for xSPO and also the load balancer for FreeLoaderz out of pure generosity. He is super welcoming to new and learning SPOs. He's always been quick to respond to me if I have questions, has the right attitude in every conversation I've had with him. He's just an upstanding guy. The kind of community member that truly represents the heart of Cardano's ethos and someone this community needs to support.
ADA4good Vahid -
Ryan [PANL] is the most undervalued gem of the community I can name. He has been doing ton of work for xSPO as an admin for many months, he built the daedalus smash servers, he is working hard to help freeloaderz.io (submit api) project without getting the credits he deserves, he is nice and kind and selfless. Just to name a few things…
Guy from Adarare:
You will need to write a book not a blog on this guy !
APEX Pool commented:
Really, he deserves the best reviews. He is helping many people.
Rich from ECP:
Ryan is awesome!
When you remember that these guys all compete for delegators, this feedback becomes even more impressive. What's so special about Ryan and PANL pool? Pretty simple really - they have knowledge and they put the community first. When Sundae Swap rolled out and basically caused the chain to stand still, Ryan started looking for solutions. Freeloaderz was born when Ryan and Santo pool started chatting about potential solutions to network delays, With their combined skill and natural curiosity, the two put their heads together and Freeloaderz was born. In case you weren't aware the Freeloaderz program is a “coalition of Cardano stake pools offering url api access to their servers to help improve transaction speed by opening up ports to user wallets”. Basically it avoids the mempool and shortens transaction times when the blockchain is congested.
If you get nothing else from this article, understand that if you want a stake pool whose mindset is to fix problems rather than complain about them - Ryan is your guy and PANL should be your pool of choice. If we were in an episode of MASH, this guy would be Radar. He just gets it done.
Of course, PANL stake pool is operated by three proprietors, all coworkers in a technology company, with about forty years of combined experience in IT and system administration. Ryan has over a decade of experience as a system administrator. Brandon, another partner, is also an experienced IT professional and likes to take a holistic approach to projects so that both the individual project and the community benefit. Lastly Bob has over thirty years of experience and likes to create unique solutions for business models, rather than just glossing over problems with big box solutions. Prior to their Cardano adventure, they were mining Ethereum but decided that Cardano was more environmentally friendly and that the eUXTO model offered a much higher degree of flexibility. They created the pool in April of 2020, hit the ground running and haven't looked back.
The pool hasn’t been open a year yet and they have already had the IOG delegation and helped build Freeloaderz from the ground up. That would be enough for most pools, but not these guys. They have also whipped up three SMASH (stake pool metadata aggregation servers) which allow users to bypass the current unfair Daedalus ranking system and reconfigure their set up to only see pools are xSPO, SPA or mission driven. You can find a link to an IOHK overview of how SMASH servers work here.
Ryan, Bob and Brandon are busy helping the community and working on the ever expanding Freeloaderz project. If you haven't checked out the project discord already, please do. Its evolving into a true community project with the potential to support decentralization and a variety of projects as well as developing a Catalyst proposal to bring new opportunities to the SPO community. Currently they are working on a next level reduced cost vending machine that is enabled by a smart contract front end. Please take the time to check out Freeloaderz if you have not already done so.
In regard to PANL This is one busy, forward focused crew. The small size of the pool is not a reflection of the knowledge or dedication of its team. They are just getting started. If you have a long term interest in the growing Cardano ecosystem you really should look into PANL pool. They are here not just to stay but to build, grow and learn. I don’t know about you but I want to be on the journey with them.
By Traveler Jo | CardanoArmy.io
You can find Traveler Jo somewhere close to the sea. She loves Cardano, kayaking and food - not necessarily in that order. She's busy exploring the world, always in the company of her husband, tired dog and indignant felines.