Question 1

I'm new to Radix and don't know much about it. Can you explain what Radix is and how it works?

Accepted Answer

We collaborated with Crypto with Rico to put together a comprehensive, easy-to-follow introduction to Radix that is now available on YouTube. If you're new to Radix, this video will answer most of your questions, and it will also help you get started in the Radix ecosystem.

Question 2

What are your qualifications to operate a Radix validator node?

Accepted Answer

Our validator node has been up and running since the Radix Olympia Betanet launch on April 28, 2021. This makes us one of the most experienced Radix validator node operators: since going live in April 2021 we went through numerous validator node deployments and upgrades, performed different types of testing, maintenance, patching, and acquired a deep understanding of the Radix node's unique runtime characteristics. Over time we also progressively improved and tuned our monitoring and alert system to be able to quickly resolve node issues, providing the best possible uptime for our validator node.

In addition, our team has 20+ years of experience in system administration and data center operations for mission-critical systems, including 24x7x365 on-call production operations. We apply the same methodologies that we’ve used to ensure high availability and high performance for commercial and government clients, such as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and DevSecOps processes and best practices. For example, this means performing any type of configuration change in a test environment first before doing it in the live production environment, and automating routine operation tasks to avoid human error.

Question 3

How do you ensure high availability and continued uptime for your validator node to maximize rewards for your delegators?

Accepted Answer

We continuously maintain an on-call schedule for our System Administrators (SAs) that designates a primary SA on call who will be contacted in case of a validator node issue, and a backup SA that will be contacted shortly afterwards in case the primary SA does not respond to the monitoring alert. We have multiple redundant alert systems from different monitoring vendors that alert our on-call SAs via email, text message, phone app alerts, phone calls, and Slack messages if there is any server issue. In the unlikely event that both the primary and backup SAs on call do not respond to the alerts, we have an additional level of support provided through the SAs of our partners Radix DLT Staking and Staatenlos to quickly bring our node back up if it goes down; for more details on these partnerships please refer to our blog.

Question 4

What is your level of community engagement?

Accepted Answer

✔ We help coordinate Radix meetups in the Washington, DC metro area to increase awareness of Radix in the crypto community.

✔ Our lead Wilson is one of the moderators for the Radix DLT USA Telegram channel.

✔ We are actively engaged in Radix's social media channels, including Twitter, Discord (mainly in the #general, #validator-announcement, #staking, and #node-runners channels), Telegram and r/RadixValidators in Reddit. We help the community by answering as many questions as we can, and sharing our knowledge and experience related to Radix. We also have a multi-lingual staff that participates in the #spanish and #portuguese channels in Discord and Telegram to help promote diversity and decentralization for Radix.
 
✔ In addition to making our own contributions, we also follow all Radix discussions in Twitter, Discord, Telegram and Reddit to absorb the wealth of knowledge and lessons learned shared by the community, and use it to improve our best practices.
 
✔ We share scripts, documentation and artifacts such as automation scripts and custom Grafana dashboards for monitoring and alerts with the validator community in our GitHub site, as part of our efforts towards open knowledge-sharing and fostering Radix ecosystem growth.

✔ We actively participate in the validator beta testing programs from RDX Works: we participated in the very first betanet testing for the Olympia release, and we were also part of the Babylon Betanet validator testing program. In each of these validator programs we performed thorough testing and provided our findings to the RDX Works team for defect fixes and product improvements.

Question 5

Do you collaborate with any DeFi projects building dApps on Radix?

Accepted Answer

Yes! We have a close partnership with the SRWA team to help them build a new bridge between crypto and fiat that allows seamless conversions between physical goods, crypto and cash. We perform operations and maintenance for the SRWA validator node, and we assist the SRWA team with both technical and business expertise to help them build one of the top DeFi products on Radix. In return, Radical Staking delegators qualify for giveaways and airdrops organized by the SRWA team. For more information about SRWA please visit their website, and join their Telegram.

Question 6

Do you collaborate with other validator node runners?

Accepted Answer

We actively collaborate with other node runners in the #node-runners channel in Discord and in the Node Runners Telegram Channel. In addition, we have a close relationship with Kesswi | radixdltstaking.com in which we collaborate to develop innovative DevSecOps solutions for Radix validator nodes and perform joint troubleshooting of validator node issues. We then share our findings and insights in the #node-runners channel to contribute to the continuous improvement of overall network health. Radix DLT Staking was a fellow Betanet program participant and we highly recommend them for delegators aiming to spread their delegation across several validators. Their validator address is validator_rdx1svm98ppmxzft82lykaeudwp3z562dlqk692ws5us5a8lr78ux3v8kr and you can find out more about them at https://radixdltstaking.com.

Question 7

What hosting providers do you use?

Accepted Answer

Our nodes run on DigitalOcean in North American and European regions. Although less famous than industry giants such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform, DigitalOcean is one of the leading cloud providers and it's commonly used by many stake pool operators. One of the main reasons we selected DigitalOcean was due to the higher level of performance provided by DigitalOcean's "droplets" (server instances) against comparable AWS EC2 and Azure VM instances during Betanet and Stokenet testing. For example, EC2 and Azure instances with the recommended server configurations froze during performance intensive tasks such as the initial database synchronization, requiring node restarts, while DigitalOcean machines remained stable and allowed the database synchronization to complete without any issues.

Question 8

How do I get in touch with you if I have additional questions?

Accepted Answer

Communication with the community is very important to us: we provide frequent updates and answer questions from our delegators through multiple channels, including email, Twitter, Telegram, and updates published on this website. If you are staking with us, make sure to join our delegator support channel in Telegram for the latest updates and quick access to our community support team: https://t.me/radicalstakingsupport.

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