TIP-067 Part 1 - Add Professional Node Operators to Beta Staker Program

Proposals
1

Tl;dr

The goal of this proposal is to add 5 professional node operators to the tBTC Beta Staker program by delegating DAO-owned T.

Background

tBTC currently relies on a permissioned group of node operators, referred to as “Beta Stakers”, to secure the wallets that contain the BTC that backs tBTC. These nodes are highly reliable, and stake a significant amount of T.

An increase in the number of Beta Staker nodes will improve system decentralization through an increase in the geographic dispersion of Beta-Stake operators, and the distribution of key shares created by the “Distributed Key Generation” (DKG) ceremony.

The goal of Part 1 of TIP-067 is to increase the Beta Staker set from 20 to 25 nodes, and T staked across the Beta Staker nodes by 150M T.

Proposal

The tBTC development team will vet and select 5 professional node operators from applications via this forum to be added to the Beta Staker permissioned group. These nodes will be delegated T to their node from the DAO treasury.

Duration

New Beta Stakers will be required to run their respective nodes until the conclusion of the Beta Staker program, or for a minimum of 12 months, whichever is sooner. It is not possible to exit the Beta Staker program once added, which means that operators must continue to participate until the retirement of the program.

Requirements

Operators of Beta Staker nodes are expected to be extremely responsive, especially in regards to upgrades requested by software contributors. Ideally, they should be able to upgrade their nodes within 24 hours of notification.

Operators of Beta Staker nodes must be technically capable. They are responsible for ensuring high availability (more than 96% uptime) and security of the node.

A Beta Staker node performs more computationally expensive operations (DKG, threshold signing, etc) compared to a standard Threshold node. To ensure a high level of service, a Beta Staker node requires a machine with:

  • 4 CPUs
  • 4 GB of RAM
  • 1 GB of persistent disk space
  • 80 Mbps of network bandwidth
  • Linux OS

Additional documentation can be found here: https://docs.threshold.network/staking-and-running-a-node/tbtc-Beta Stakers-program

TACo - Additional Application

Threshold Network has two applications that operate on its security model: tBTC and TACo. Beta Stakers that choose to run an additional VPS for a TACo node with their delegation to receive an additional 25% payment.

Details on also running a TACo node, to receive 100% of the available remuneration, instead of 75%, can be found here: https://docs.threshold.network/staking-and-running-a-node/running-a-node/self-managed/pre-node-setup.

Criteria for Selection

Eligibility requirements are strict due to the high uptime requirement, and only the best applicants will be selected.

Operators must:

  • Have a demonstrable history of professional validator services.
  • Submit a written application via this forum with the following details:
    • Company name
    • Company website
    • Company description
    • Country of operation
    • Relevant experience
    • Description of solution design
    • Description of backup and security principals
    • Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo? Y/N
    • Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months? Y/N
  • Be familiar with Threshold Network and tBTC architecture.

The DAO will reimburse Ethereum transaction fees (in ETH) directly to the respective operator addresses on a monthly basis.

Delegation and Terms

The DAO will delegate 30M T to each successful applicant. Successful operators will receive a $1,500 USD/month payment for participating in the Beta Staker program. If the provider chooses to run a TACo node in addition to tBTC, the monthly payment will be $2,000 USD/month.

Additional terms:

  • Payment terms are subject to nodes meeting the 96% uptime requirement in the month prior. Uptime below the minimum will result in forfeiture of that month’s payment.
  • Payments will be made in T in accordance with the T/USD price at 10am UTC on the final day of the month, as reported by CoinGecko.
  • Cost for the program will be covered by staking rewards generated from the delegated T.
  • T rewards will be claimable by the Treasury Guild and distributed accordingly.
  • Any excess T generated above the cost of the program will be burned.

Indicative Timeline

  • Nominations Period - December 13th - December 27th
  • Candidate selection period - December 27th - January 3rd
  • Technical setup and troubleshooting - January 3rd - January 17th
  • Treasury Guild Delegation Execution - January 18th
  • New Beta Stakers added incrementally - January 19th - onward
2 Likes
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Hey, I’m Anthony from Sub7, a dedicated node operator service based in Argentina. We are excited about the prospect of bringing our unique geographic location and technical expertise to your blockchain network, we have been following your project for a while as we have contributed to similar projects like REN (may rest in peace) in the past.

TLDR

  • Name: Sub7 - https://sub7.xyz
  • Contact: hello@sub7.xyz
  • Infrastructure Setup: Dedicated Bare Metal in Tier3 Datacenters
  • Infrastructure Location: Argentina, Canada & EU
  • Company registration: Luxemburg
  • Operating Networks: Ethereum, Gnosis Chain, Polygon & others

"Enhance your blockchain’s resilience and global reach by partnering with us, an experienced Node Operator from Argentina, committed to decentralizing and diversifying blockchain networks through top-tier, dedicated server infrastructure and 24/7 expert monitoring.”

About Sub7

Sub7 was established in 2020 as a security-focused organization, providing solutions for builders, creators, and investors. However, its founders have been operating/mining Ethereum nodes since 2016. In response to the growing demand from our clients and the expansion of PoS networks, we began offering Staking & RPC solutions. Currently, we operate hundreds of validators & nodes using bare-metal dedicated servers located in Tier3+ data centers in Argentina. Additionally, we aim to contribute to the decentralization of blockchain networks by offering services from under-developed geographies.

Our Infrastructure and Expertise

We are professional and educated infrastructure, software, and security software engineers. Most of us were born and raised in Argentina, but we are now distributed between Buenos Aires and the EU. With experience in working for FAANG-type companies, we have now fully transitioned to the Web3 world. We are deeply immersed in this ecosystem and strongly believe in the value of trustless systems.

Our infrastructure primarily operates out of Tier-3 data centers in Argentina, but we also have a presence in Canada and the EU. We utilize bare-metal dedicated servers to ensure optimal performance and reliability for our node operations. Our team provides 24x7 monitoring, ensuring the highest levels of uptime and security for your network.

Experience and Current Projects

We currently support multiple Ethereum Native staking nodes and RocketPool for our clients. Our involvement in these projects demonstrates our capability and experience in managing high-performance blockchain operations. Additionally, we actively participate in Testnets and Beta programs, supporting innovative technologies like Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) and Data Availability (DA). This keeps us at the forefront of blockchain technology and ensures that we bring the latest and best practices to your network.

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3

Hi Everyone. We would like to show our interest in the Beta Staker Program.

Company Name: Republic Crypto
Website: (https://republic.com)
Company Description & Relevant Experience:
Republic is advancing towards its Series C funding, following a successful Series B round in 2021 where $150 million was raised: Republic announces a $150 million Series B round.
The company comprises three key verticals:

1. Republic Retail (https://republic.com): Republic.com and Seedrs.com have collectively facilitated approximately $5.5 billion in funds raised for over 4,000 ventures, engaging 3.5 million active investors.
2. Republic Capital (https://republiccapital.co): With nearly a dozen funds, our investments span from Web2 giants like SpaceX, Carta, and Robinhood, to Web3 innovators including Polygon and DappRadar.
3. Republic Crypto
a. Republic Advisory Services (RAS)
b. Republic OTC Treasury Markets
c. Republic Runtime (treasury management/infrastructure) with around $500m in delegation, some of the largest delegations for Polygon, Avalanche, Aptos. Additional chains include: Aptos, Atom, Aura, Avail, Avalanche, Canto, Ethereum, Islamic Coin, Polygon, Near, Neutron, Pyth, Regen, Stride, Sui, Tenet, Union, Obol-lido, SSV-lido, Venom Foundation and a dozen more unlaunched emerging L1s. We’re also playing in the LST/LRT/LSD space with several providers like Eigenlayer, Stader, Stakewise.
4.Country of Operation: Jersey
5.Description of Solution Design & Backup and Security Principles:

  • Our engineering team is international allowing us to provide 24/7 emergency response.
  • All infrastructure is distributed across multiple regions and providers to reduce single points of failure.
  • We exclusively utilise high quality dedicated bare metal infrastructure for maximum reliability.
  • Servers are configured via Ansible allowing for peer review, fast migration and replication.
  • New deployments are subject to penetration testing before being signed off.

Participation in tBTC & TACo: Yes, we commit to participating with both tBTC and TACo.
Commitment Duration: Yes, we commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months.
We believe our extensive experience, coupled with our robust technical infrastructure and commitment to security and reliability, makes us an ideal candidate for the tBTC Beta Staker program.

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4

Hello Threshold team! Would be great to support the network so please see Liquify’s application below.

Company name - Liquify LTD
Company website - https://www.liquify.io/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/liquify_ltd

Company description - Bare metal Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) company servicing institutions and foundations with Nodes, Validators, RPC endpoints, snapshots, SubGraphs, monitoring solutions and other custom tools.

Country of operation - UK registered company with global infrastructure set up across 6 data centers: US East and West (Washingon D.C. and Phoenix), Europe (UK and Germany), Asia (Singapore and Japan).

Relevant experience - Over 3 years of blockchain infrastructure for over 50+ chains including:

Description of solution design - self owned bare metal servers co-located in Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers with high-end specification machines (e.g. Dual Xeon gold 6240s or Dual AMD 7543 (varies slightly depending on regions), 256gb+ RAM, 8TB+ Raid 10 NVME).

Description of backup and security principals - all the nodes we set up are redundant (so there’s always a fallback and we guarantee 99.95% up-time in the SLA) and connected to load-balancers.

We make use of internal and boundary firewalls to restrict access to node services and prevent lateral movement. We also make use of endpoint monitoring and logging solutions e.g sentinel one to detect and prevent against attacks.

Furthermore, we engage in regular penetration testing and weekly vulnerability scanning against our internal and external infrastructure to ensure compliance with ISO 27001 in preparation for certification.

Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo? - Yes.

Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months? - Yes, definitely want to engage in a long-term partnership and explore other areas of cooperation where we can help the community and the project.

Also, we are testing and spinning up the nodes at the moment, so we’ll add the details shortly if it is possible to edit the message here. Thank you!

3 Likes
5

Apologies I think the Criteria checklist was edited after we submitted or we missed it completely. Here is some enhanced data to complement our previous post:

  • Company name: Sub7
  • Company website: https://sub7.xyz
  • Company description: Provided in the above post
  • Country of operation: Infra in Argentina mostly, legally In Luxemburg registered
  • Relevant experience: Provided in the above post, important to note we’ve operated similar projects like REN in the past
  • Description of solution design: Dedicated Bare Metal, Single tenant, Proxmox virtualized environments.
  • Description of backup and security principals: We use a separate geographic location in Canada and/or EU for Backups RPC nodes and key storage. All Servers use unique logins with keypairs and 2FA over a private VPN for access. 24/7 monitoring and alerts, as well as Datadog for Infrastructure alerts, scanning results and general infra logs.
  • Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo? Y
  • Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months? Y
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Hi all

We, at Pier Two, look forward to working with Threshold!

Our application is below.

Company name:
Pier Two

Company website:
https://piertwo.com/

Company description:
Australian-based enterprise-grade infrastructure for institutional clients. Non-custodial ETH Staking. Secure Node & Validation Services. Creating the light client Lantern (C#).

Country of operation:
Australia

Relevant experience:
Established in 2018. Chainlink Node Operator (since 2019, supporting networks including Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Binance Smart Chain, Celo, Ethereum, Gnosis, Kroma, Metis, Moonbeam, Moonriver, Optimism, Polygon, Polygon ZKEVM and Wemix), Ethereum Validators (since 2020), Arbitrum, EigenLayer, Swell, StakeWise, SSV, Obol, Consensys DIN and more. Also, Pier Two is currently leading two DVT clusters (using SSV and Obol) in the Lido DVT testing round. We have experience setting up and coordinating DKG ceremonies, and ensuring active participation from all parties involved.

Description of solution design:

  • Pier Two utilises a hybrid bare-metal / cloud deployment stack. We have dedicated servers hosted by OVH, as well as GCP and AWS.
  • Currently, we have Bitcoin RPC infrastructure running in GCP, and Ethereum RPC infrastructure running in both GCP and OVH.
  • All traffic is internal and encrypted, unless otherwise required.
  • We will run the tBTC Node in GCP for optimal uptime and redundancy.

Description of backup and security principals:

  • Pier Two follows the principle of least privilege. Meaning that only specific employees have access to certain areas of Pier Two’s Web3 Infrastructure stack.
  • Pier Two also use cloud service accounts so that any manual interaction is kept to a minimum.
  • Blockchain State for Ethereum and Bitcoin is currently snapshotted and backed-up on a weekly basis to facilitate quicker recovery and sync times.

Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo?
Yes

Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months?
Yes

Happy to answer any questions in thread!

3 Likes
7

Hi,

We are from GlobalStake, please find our application below and reach out for any questions!

Thank you for your consideration.

Company name: GlobalStake
Company website: GlobalStake.io
Linkedin: GlobalStake | LinkedIn
Country of operation: Self-owned Bare metal Infrastructure in US + EU [Expanding to LATAM and Asia in 2024]

Company description and relevant experience

GlobalStake is at the forefront of modern infrastructure tailored to the demands of the new economy. Specializing in web3 and AI, our purpose-built, bare-metal infrastructure in Tier 5 data centres spans the globe. We embody the principles of decentralisation with increased security, resilience, and the avoidance of single points of failure.

Setting us apart from major competitors, we deliberately avoid dependence on hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Azure. This strategic choice provides a distinct edge in optimizing performance as well as helping to reduce the centralisation we are seeing within the industry due to the reliance on third-party clouds.

We were founded in 2021 and have scaled up to support over 30 blockchains. We pride ourselves on being able to operate and deploy across multiple ecosystems due to our team’s extensive experience across web3 and web2. As well as supporting institutional clients with mature assets we also support early-stage projects in Genesis sets to help bootstrap their networks with first-class infrastructure and support the community and other node operators to get up to speed with the network.

More specifically we have supported Interlay a decentralised BTC bridge in the Polakdot ecosystem since day 1 and are one of the largest providers of collateral to the protocol, we have been supporting this for over a year with no downtime.

Our team includes Web2 entrepreneurs and Web3 natives with decades-long track records and many successes including our, Head of Infrastructure who has built some of the most substantial backbone infrastructure for today’s Internet. He served as a Principal Engineer for Cisco/INS, Nortel and Wellfleet Communications building the initial early infrastructure elements of Web 1.0 Our Head of Deployment is a full-stack developer architecting some of the most highly safeguarded, scalable systems and applications used by the US Armed Forces. He recently built the high-security aerospace standards and supply chain certification system used by the Department of Defense and our Chief Technology Officer a senior developer with 18+ years of experience in the media and energy sectors and is a Council Member, Senior Ambassador and Community Moderator for Kusama, and is a recognized leader in areas of Polkadot and Kusama governance. He also wrote the wiki for validator best practices and slashing for Polkadot.

Description of solution design

Software: GlobalStake uses proprietary staking software tailored to its needs. This software enables automated staking processes, monitoring of staked assets, and real-time alert systems for anomalies or potential security breaches.

Hardware: We rely on state-of-the-art, in-house, bare metal servers optimized for blockchain operations and managed out of Tier 5 data centers. These servers provide robust computational power, essential for maintaining network participation and optimizing staking rewards. All data is stored on encrypted drives, and network firewalls are routinely updated to counter evolving cyber threats.

Infrastructure:

Redundant Systems: GlobalStake employs multiple nodes in diverse geographic locations to ensure there’s no single point of failure. If one node faces issues, another can immediately take over its responsibilities, ensuring continuous network participation.

High-Availability Clusters: These are sets of nodes that work together, ensuring that if one fails, the workload is automatically transferred to another node in the cluster, minimizing downtime.

Real-time Monitoring Systems: Advanced software continuously scans the nodes and the network, detecting anomalies or potential issues that might lead to slashing.

Backup Power Supplies: In the case of power outages, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and generators are on standby to ensure servers remain operational.

Firewall and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS): These tools guard against unauthorized access or malicious attacks that might disrupt staking operations.

Description of backup and security principals

Practices:

Regular Software Updates: The staking software and associated systems are kept updated to ensure compatibility with the blockchain protocols and to incorporate any changes or improvements in staking rules.

Comprehensive Training: Personnel are regularly trained about the nuances of each blockchain protocol, slashing conditions, and the best practices to prevent them.

Scheduled Maintenance: Maintenance activities, software updates, and other potential disruptive tasks are scheduled during off-peak times or when the network is least active.

Failover Protocols: In the event of a system failure, pre-established protocols are instantly activated to switch operations to backup systems, minimizing downtime and the risk of penalties.

Detailed Logging and Audits: All staking activities are logged in real-time. Periodic audits help in identifying any deviations from the ideal process or potential vulnerabilities.

Staking Policies Review: Given that blockchain protocols can evolve, GlobalStake periodically reviews its staking policies and strategies to align with any changes or updates in staking rules on the various networks it participates in.

Incident Response Plan: In case of any adverse event, a well-documented incident response plan is activated, outlining the steps to diagnose, address, and rectify the issue while ensuring minimal disruption to staking operations.

Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo? Yes
Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months?
Yes and look forward to continuing the relationship post this in whatever way we can to support the success of the network.

2 Likes
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About DELIGHT LABS

DELIGHT LABS is a technology-driven team contributing to decentralized ecosystems in diverse ways to help them flourish, from operating validators on more than 20 networks to building DApps including Terraswap, the first AMM DEX on the Terra network, and more.

The primary mission of DELIGHT LABS is to facilitate decentralized ecosystems’ growth, and we always endeavor to put all our efforts and expertise into improving them. The team is based in South Korea, and each member possesses extensive experience in the blockchain industry from its early stages. We began our business by running validators and are now further developing DApps. Also, we are a technical partner of several institutes. One of the most prominent institutes is Hashed, the blockchain VC, which we support in terms of node operation.

The team has started the journey on the Threshold network since the NuCypher testnet and worklock phase, currently participating in PRE and TACo. Furthermore, we recently initiated the operation of the T staking pool. T staking pool, currently in the closed beta phase, allows users to stake and earn rewards without a minimum 40,000 T limitation. During the current phase we have verified the functionality of its staking and reward mechanism. Now, users can stake T by using the requestStake method on the Etherscan link(https://etherscan.io/address/0xC1d2fddF9AbE7b3B56d97729139D1f46bD0DA530#readProxyContract)]

Company Overview and Expertise

Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy and Achievements

  • Our own node monitoring solution guarantees 24/7 monitoring and maintenance
  • The strategic distribution of our nodes across multiple regions and cloud providers enhances our reliability by preventing potential disasters.
    • We have demonstrated exceptional reliability by keeping our node operation against UST-depeg event on the Terra network, enduring a massive amount of transactions.
  • Further emphasizing our dedication to security, all nodes are meticulously isolated within a VPC.
  • All relevant keys are stored using an encrypted storage solution to ensure security.

tl;dr

  • Company name: DELIGHT LABS
  • Company website: https://delightlabs.io
  • Country of operation: South Korea
  • Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo? Yes
  • Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months? Yes
2 Likes
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Company name: Ponkila
Company website: https://www.ponkila.com
Company description: Ponkila is a (business) concern operated from Finland which provides services to Linux infrastructure management using NixOS. Ponkila’s main client is its sister company, which is a private Ethereum investment fund registered in Finland. For technical documentation regarding NixOS, see our GitHub, and more relevantly: GitHub - ponkila/homestaking-infra: Ethereum home-staking infrastructure powered by Nix
Country of operation: Finland
Relevant experience: Ponkila has conducted Ethereum-focused node services as a business for PoW and PoS since 2020. More recently, we have been developing a custom Linux distribution called HomestakerOS http://homestakeros.com, which has received grants from the Ethereum Foundation and Blox Staking (a.k.a SSV network) to ease the maintainability of homestaking by developing a custom Linux distribution built on NixOS. Hence, our main business expertise covers Linux system administration and integrated, reproducible software packaging on Linux based on NixOS.
Description of solution design: We maintain a set of geographically distributed bare-metal servers in various locations in Finland. Coincidentally, we run (if not the most) northern Ethereum nodes worldwide. Our approach for tBTC is to package your software using Nix and integrate it within our custom Linux distribution. Software packages would be upstreamed to relevant open-source projects, the ethereum-nix package repository, from which anyone can install the software using the Nix package manager. This complements the existing Docker installation procedure of tBTC. The software would then be deployed on our servers for redundancy and provided as a load-balanced HTTP proxy via Hetzner colocations. Our servers are based on AMD Threadripper and EPYC platforms, purpose-built for blockchain use due to their high I/O bandwidth. We maintain and own our own hardware.
Description of backup and security principals: we store data on multiple CoW filesystems, which allows us to have periodic snapshots of the state data. This allows rollbacks when upgrading our software stack. We run RAID1 disk arrays on NVMe drives. Further relevant for backups, our use of the Nix package manager allows us to run bit-identical software packages on each node, further enhancing the reproducibility and uniformity of our nodes’ software stacks. We maintain a history of all our server configurations, including the complete set of installed software over our public GitHub repositories. Network security-wise, we run a Wireguard overlay network between our servers. OS security-wise, we run our OS as ephemeral RAM disks, meaning that on each system upgrade, the nodes are wiped clean, removing the chance of configuration-based bit rot and other mutable state that has creeped onto the nodes. For private keys, our separate validator nodes use hardware HSMs to store relevant private keys on secure enclaves. Our nodes’ WAN access is firewalled using Netgate’s pfSense hardware, which we maintain and own ourselves. Our overlay network also includes separate exit nodes on Hetzner to route incoming network traffic.
Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo: tBTC certainly, TACo tentatively, yes, but still needs further investigation from us.
Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months? Y

2 Likes
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Company Name: Colossus S.r.l.

Company Site: https://colossus.digital/

Country of Operation: Italy

Company profile: Colossus is a pioneering digital asset management company that provides a comprehensive suite of services for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. As a regulated digital assets custodian under the Italian OAM, and supported by unique partners like Ledger,we offer secure storage of digital assets with cutting-edge protection measures. We specialise in supporting Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chains, serving as a catalyst for growth and innovation in the blockchain ecosystem. Our meticulously built nodes ensure network resilience.

Founded in Italy, Colossus has established itself as a leader in the European digital asset management industry. We offer a range of services, including staking, institutional custody, and protocol governance.

Our Product

Our product suite is designed to cater to the needs of various stakeholders in the blockchain ecosystem:

Staking Services: We offer staking services on all major PoS chains, allowing token holders to contribute to network consensus and earn a share of staking rewards.

Institutional Custody: Our custody services adhere to stringent Italian OAM regulations, ensuring secure storage of digital assets with cutting-edge protection measures.

Protocol Governance: We aid in protocol governance through active on-chain voting and constant engagement with ecosystem developers.

Custodians, Treasury Managers, Crypto Wallets, and Exchanges: We provide tailored solutions for different stakeholders, addressing their unique challenges and helping them maximize their returns from digital assets.

ON-O FF Ramp and OTC Colossus, is a merchant service provider connected with an EU acquirer supporting transactions through CC circuits and Binance Pay

Relevant experience: Colossus has proven to be the pioneer in Italy in the field of regulated crypto staking, distinguishing ourselves as the sole provider offering this service in compliance with current regulations. Additionally, we are extremely proud to be the first and only official partners of Ledger in Italy, as well as running our services with the Fireblocks License.

Our success is anchored in the trust placed in us by entities, institutions, and individuals who have chosen to entrust us with their assets.

We continue to pursue excellence, always oriented towards continuous improvement, seeking to achieve the next “power-up” both as a company and as innovators. We look ahead with determination, ready to overcome new challenges and further solidify our leadership position in the digital asset sector.

Infrastructure:

Colossus has built a robust infrastructure spanning over 100+ nodes and 15 Chain on both the mainnet and testnet. Leveraging the power of cloud services from various vendors, we are taking measures to ensure optimum security and low latency by establishing a dedicated point-to-point network connection with our cloud service providers. Colossus offers three primary methods by which users can engage with our staking Services.

Colossus oversees comprehensive network operations, transaction processing, staking activities, and communication with validators. It is designed to accommodate multiple blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Tezos, Cosmos, and Polkadot, each adhering to its specific staking protocols. This versatile infrastructure seamlessly integrates with blockchain nodes and APIs, facilitating the retrieval and processing of staking-related information such as account balances, staking statuses, rewards, and slashing events.

Description of backup and security principals:

  • TLS Endpoint Encryption:

    • Utilizes TLS encryption to safeguard communication from Man-in-the-Middle attacks.
    • Most endpoints, excluding P2P ports, are secured with TLS, facilitated by free SSL certificates through LetsEncrypt.

  • DDoS Protection:

    • Inbound packets from the public Internet are routed through cloud-provider DDoS protection to mitigate denial of service attacks.
    • Private sentries with outbound connections ensure continued P2P packet transmission during targeted attacks.
    • Private sentries are privately peered with selected partners via cloud-provider network peering.

  • SSH Access:

    • Node operation is conducted via SSH, restricted to whitelisted private Jump hosts.

  • Firewalls:

    • Network-level firewalls control access between networks, while host-based firewalls govern data ingress and egress on individual hosts.
    • Host-based Intrusion Detection Systems (HIDS) trigger alerts based on predefined rulesets.

  • Least-Privilege Security Model:

    • User access accounts follow a least-privilege model, granting minimal permissions necessary for duties across all services.

  • Limited-Lifetime Lease-Based Credentials:

    • Lease-based credentials with limited scope and single-use or short TTL mitigate the impact of unintentional disclosure.

  • Hardware Wallets:

    • Irregular signing activities use Ledger hardware wallet devices, enhancing security.

  • Network Management and Maintenance:

    • High availability and fault tolerance minimize error rates during server failures or network attacks.
    • Automated systems handle server failures, allowing troubleshooting over an extended period.

  • Anti-Slashing Mechanisms:

    • Validators face severe financial penalties for key compromise or duplicate block signing.
    • Operational procedures prevent simultaneous activation of multiple signing/validation services, reducing the risk of slashing.
    • Solutions include MPC technology, Distributed Validator Technology, and high-performance signers.
    • Specific operational procedures and recurrent training ensure strict adherence to protocols on testnet infrastructures.

Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo?
Yes

Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months?

Yes, and we look forward to participating even further on the roadmap

2 Likes
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Gm, I’m Ayvee from Symmetry, please find our application down below.

Company name: Symmetry
Company website: Symm3try.xyz
Company description: Symmetry is a SEA-focussed ecosystem builder working with global ecosystems to empower builders in SEA, co-incubate them to further enrich their ecosystem.
Country of operation: Thailand
Relevant experience:

  • XAI Node Operator
  • Band Protocol Node Operator
  • Other Cosmos based Chain Operator
  • Cosmos based archive nodes

Description of solution design:

  • Our servers will be run on GCP and AWS to assure availability.
  • Real-time monitoring systems to always assure that maintenance is provided within the required timeframe.

Description of backup and security principals:

  • Regular backup intervals
  • Fallback nodes and node-rebalancing to assure constant availability

Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo? Y/N: Yes
Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months? Y/N: Yes
Be familiar with Threshold Network and tBTC architecture: Yes, we look forward to maintaining this relationship beyond its current phase, offering support in any possible way to ensure the ongoing success of the network.

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Hi all, thank you for your applications. It’s exciting to see many quality applications.

A quick update - due to the holiday period and an overly optimistic timeline, the selection deadline will be delayed until the 12th of January, after which the team will setup period will commence.

Thank you for your patience.

1 Like
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Hi Threshold community,

This is Willem over at Kiln, the staking technology provider. We’re excited by the opportunity to become Beta Staker and to make a contribution to this ecosystem at the infrastructure level.

  • Company Name: Kiln
  • Website: www.kiln.fi
  • Company Description & Relevant Experience:

Kiln is a leading enterprise-grade staking technology provider, with over $4B in assets under stake across dozens of protocols. Kiln has extensive security practices, policies and infrastructure in place to protect staked assets, detailed over at https://security.kiln.fi. We have purpose-built our Ethereum infrastructure to mitigate slashing risk as much as possible. Our anti-slashing practices are endorsed by the Ethereum Foundation, and we have written about them at length in this blog post: Ethereum anti-slashing strategies. We are SOC2 type 2 compliant and regularly pentested. All security reports can be shared on demand.

We partner with more than a hundred leading web3 and financial entities to help them stake their own assets or offer staking as a service to their users. Some examples of our partners are Coinbase, Binance, Crypto.com, Ledger, Kraken, Bitgo, Fireblocks and Bitpanda. Kiln regularly outperforms the network average across assets in terms of rewards generated, as can be seen on rated.network and stakingrewards.com.

  • Country of operation:

Kiln is headquartered in France but has a distributed workforce and support team. Our infrastructure is diversified and flexible to different regions and providers.

  • Description of solution design:

In the context of Ethereum validators and our reporting API we use 3 Validator Clients (Prysm, Teku, Lighthouse) - 1 Execution layer client (Geth) For all other services, we deploy using Kubernetes. Ethereum mainnet network clients are independently audited and tested before mainet deployment. Kiln uses multiple providers and is flexible to provide nodes in specific regions. For Ethereum mainnet and Goerli testnet, today it AWS deployed in EU-West-1 (Ireland), but this will be multi-region by Q1 2024. OVH is used for other Ethereum testnets (Sepolia and Holesky). We also work with GCP (Google Cloud) for some instances.

  • Description of backup and security principals

All of our security policies and reports can be accessed over at https://security.kiln.fi/. We have a business continuity and disaster recovery plan which we were certified for as part of our successful SOC 2 Type 2 audit. We also have an Ethereum-specific policy involving exiting all validators or transfering validation keys in case Kiln can no longer operate the service.

We have architected our platform to be resilient to underlying failure. Our main infrastructure is spread on 3 availability zones. In case of the loss of an availability zone we have a procedure to move resources on the remaining two. In case of the loss of all of our AWS availability zone in our main region, we can still access our Vault (deployed in a multi-region manner) and rebuild our infrastructure there. All of Kiln infrastructure is infrastructure as code (IAC) and stored in version controlled system (Git) and therefore can be recovered quickly. We run services in three additional clouds (Google, Scaleway and OVH) which we could spin up in fast. On OVH, a failover node exists on another region for every validators running.

  • Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo? Yes
  • Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months? Yes

We look forward to supporting the project to the best of our abilities.

1 Like
15

Hello everyone, it’s a pleasure to be here.

I’d like to introduce the Stakely application.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at admin@stakely.io.

Company name: Stakely

Company website: https://stakely.io

Company description:

Stakely is a professional Staking-as-a-Service company based in Spain, specializing in Proof-of-Stake blockchains. With over 5 years of experience in the blockchain industry, we provide reliable and staking solutions for over 60k users and $1.2B worth of staked assets.

We are especially proud of our Ethereum achievements, running over 11k mainnet validators with one of the best effectiveness scores according to Rated Network. These validators are run for important protocols such as Lido, Swell, Stader, and Stakewise, as well as our clients. We also collaborate with client teams by sharing feedback, reporting issues, and running testing images.

In addition to our validator services, we have developed a range of tools and services to enhance the usability and accessibility of blockchain technology.

  1. Staking Dashboard: This tool allows users to monitor their staked assets, track rewards, and easily manage their wallets.
  2. Multicoin Faucet: It offers easy access to various mainnet and testnet tokens, making it convenient for new users to get started.
  3. Web3 Load Balancer: This free tool enhances the scalability of decentralized applications that need access to blockchain data, optimizing resource allocation and improving performance and efficiency for users.

We also create educational content on our blog and provide video tutorials on our YouTube channel. With a team of skilled DevOps engineers, blockchain experts, and dedicated content creators, we actively contribute to blockchain adoption through participation, testing, and community engagement.

Country of operation: Spain

Relevant experience:

Since our launch, we have enhanced our infrastructure, monitoring, and automation systems to ensure optimal performance and security measures for over 40 blockchains, including Ethereum, Aptos, Solana, Near, Fantom, Sui, Cosmos, and more. Notably, we have experience conducting DKG ceremonies with Obol and SSV DVT (Distributed Validator Technology) solutions, demonstrating our competence in this specialized domain. Moreover, we possess expertise in oracles and relays, having been chosen to participate in the operator set for Stader’s ETHx oracle

Description of solution design:

Stakely runs multiple instances of Ethereum full nodes in Goerli, Holesky, and mainnet to operate over 70k validator keys combined. This infrastructure is deployed in different bare-metal providers across Europe in Tier 3 datacenters or higher. Thanks to this, we mitigate the impact of localized network outages on our services and can provide an uptime greater than 99.9%.

Apart from the geographical diversity, we favor client diversity by running over seven different implementations of Ethereum execution and consensus clients. This allows us to reduce correlated failures caused by a programming error or a consensus issue.

We think our existing Ethereum infrastructure will be highly valuable for the Threshold Network, providing high reliability and decentralization.

We are also highly confident that we can run the required tBTC, Electrum, Bitcoin, and TACo clients with high professionalism with our experience running different kinds of networks since our inception.

Description of backup and security principals:

In Stakely, we always have at least an extra read-only node as a backup or at least a way to quickly sync the node within minutes. This node can upgrade to a validator in a short time in case of an emergency.

We always avoid moving keys unless it is totally necessary to reduce slashing risks. To do so, we make use of remote signer or threshold signing solutions like Web3signer, Horcrux, or DVT whenever possible.

We follow the common Linux best practices, such as using SSH keys, using non-standard SSH port, no-root login user, automatic security updates, etc. All our nodes and servers are monitored with Prometheus, and Grafana; alerting via Discord, email, phone call, and other custom solutions allowing us to attend emergencies 24/7.

Additional scripts are developed by our team to track and alert the most relevant health metrics of the services that we run.

In Stakely, we have written extensive internal documentation about all the procedures required to operate the validators and guidelines to react in critical situations.

Will you participate with both tBTC & TACo?: Yes

Do you commit to participating as a Beta Staker for a minimum of 12 months?: Yes

2 Likes
16

Thank you, once again, to all of the applicants of the Beta Staker program. After extensive deliberation, five professional node operators were selected to expand the Beta Staker program.

The successful professional operators, in order of application, are as follows:

Congratulations to successful applicants.

To applicants that were not selected: thank you for applying. There has been recent discussion in the community of the continued expansion of the Beta Staker program, in which case you will have the opportunity to be selected.

Next steps
The technical setup period will commence immediately, and successful applicants are encouraged to begin the setup of their nodes. Please DM this account (via this forum) a Telegram handle to create a group for direct communications.

In addition, please share a public Ethereum address to which payments will be made.

Documentation on setting up a Threshold Network node can be found here: https://docs.threshold.network/staking-and-running-a-node/running-a-node

For the fastest response, technical questions are best placed in our public Discord server: https://discord.gg/threshold

Nodes will be added to the program in a progressive roll out to ensure system stability.

4 Likes
17

I am pleased to announce that it was decided to continue the expansion of the Beta Staker program with an additional five professional node operators.

The successful professional operators, in order of application, are as follows:

Congratulations for being selected.

Next steps
Successful applicants: please begin to setup your nodes.

Documentation on the general setup process can be found here: https://docs.threshold.network/staking-and-running-a-node/running-a-node

Please note that Beta Staker nodes have additional requirements, which are covered here: tBTC Beta Stakers Program - Threshold Docs

If you are not already in direct communication with the DAO, please DM @Vict0r with a Discord or Telegram handle (via this forum) or join the Threshold Discord via Threshold Network ✜

@Vict0r will provide additional details of the next steps.

2 Likes
19

Hi everyone,
I’m Andrea from Colossus. We are really proud to have been selected as operator into the Beta Staker Program.

Here are the Colossus’ addresses:

tBTC: 0xB4C3Bc96509f8B172Ba9b066Ba83f80ddF1dF4A8
TACo: 0x398380343c133246f5a7Be1e64AdfEeF4Ee0e63B

Staking Provider: thresholdnetwork.colossusdigital.eth
ETH Payment Address : colossusdigital.eth

Thank you very much !
A.

3 Likes
20

Hello Threshold Team.

Sub7 is excited to join your node operator set and help enable the success of the Threshold Network.

We have set up the infrastructure and the following are our Operator and Staking Addresses.

TACO: 0xcE1dD33AEAfD3042F0e21B1Af3A463aAFb35B19a
tBTC: 0x516C1024745FB62174fe8b5a4fFb0c428cc695f9

Staking provider: 0x885fA88126955D5CFE0170A134e0300B8d3EfF47
Signed Message: https://etherscan.io/verifySig/35168

Technical Contact: noditos@sub7.xyz
General Inquires: hello@sub7.xyz

3 Likes
22

Hi Threshold team & community members :slight_smile:

Here is the information of DELIGHT LABS

tBTC: 0xAEDA27AB0037986825397da7bC415F2aF8CEb458
TACo: 0x9065fa9c131E6893D11be2166D8C7Af8C639198C
Staking Provider and ETH Payment Address: 0x9Aa35dCE841A43693Cde23B86c394E1aEFb61c65

Signature: https://etherscan.io/verifySig/35264

3 Likes
23

Hi team,

GlobalStake information below

TACo: 0x1433BdE93eCbc8D60f0c7bC7044CD71E403Be505
tBTC: 0xfB7AC2D1ee57B6D8FeC1b591bea77DbF04482D99
Staking Provider and ETH Payment Address: 0x331F6346C4c1bdb4Ef7467056C66250F0Eb8A44f

1 Like