A community by investors for investors.

Join by searching for DAWN in the delegate tab of Yoroi or Daedalus.

Welcome to DAWN, a community for long-term investment in Cardano. We see this a mixture of value and growth investing, not speculation. We publish extensive online strategy material on reddit and our delegates have a private community mailing list. DAWN is managed by Shane Coughlan and has a strong focus on transparent, effective governance. We are part of the Cardano SPO’s Japanese Guild (非公式) and the Single Pool Alliance.

DAWN is designed to provide similar returns to pools containing 30,000,000 ADA. Learn why in the “Competitiveness” tab. New delegate? Contact shane@opendawn.com for access to our private mailing list.

  1. Clarity of governance. DAWN is managed by a clearly identified professional with a long career in technology, governance and community building. We are committed to great investor outcomes inside the pool and in the broader ecosystem. Delegates are stakeholders and guide strategy. Communication on roadmaps, decisions and actions are released on a weekly basis. DAWN seeks to provide stability and sustainability, two of the most important tools an investor has.
  2. Clarity of purpose. DAWN has been built to bring together people investing in Cardano for the long-term, with a focus on the ~4.64% rewards available in the ecosystem, and a secondary interest in the appreciation of the token value over time. The specific model is a mixture of value and growth investing, not speculation.
  3. Clarity of approach. DAWN is operated without mystery or surprises. Strategy and actions? Justified. Infrastructure? Explained. Location? Described. Power and fallback? Specifics. Intent to institute security audits? Explicit.
  4. Community, community, community. Cryptocurrencies remain a difficult model for many people who could benefit from being involved. We are in a unique space where the intermediaries found in more traditional trading are unnecessary. This is an opportunity for a new experience in a familiar investment workflow.

  1. Current Pledge: 5,700 ADA
  2. Fee: 1.83%
  3. Mandatory 340 ADA charge returned to delegates

Each decision regarding DAWN's structure has been carefully considered.

  1. We started with a 2,500 ADA pledge in April and a guideline statement that 1,000 to 2,000 ADA would be added per month while ADA remained under 2 USD.
    1. 1,540 ADA was added for May on our regular monthly cycle.
    2. 1,340 was opportunistically purchased for June due to low market prices and activated early.
    3. A final purchase of 820 ADA was opportunistically purchased in Mid-May just before ADA crossed 2 USD.
    4. We are monitoring the market to determine next steps now that the guideline resistance level has been surpassed. Unlike many of peers in this ecosystem who purchased last year at 2 or 3 cents per ADA, we entered in March when Cardano was at 1.19 USD and rising. Nevertheless, we are committed to building a pool that will reward all participants. Remember, pool size is less important than positioning, continuity and alignment with your personal goals.
  2. Fee: 1.83%. This pool is for long-term investment and sustainability. Remember: this is not 1.83% from what you earn on the pool. This is 1.83% from the overarching earnings of the pool. Learn more about why this has minimal impact on you while providing a foundation for continuity. This fee is the calculation as to why this pool can operate without leveraging Cardano's arbitrary fixed cost of 340 ADA per epoch (five days). You pay a lot less. The pool has a predictable return for its sustainability account. Everyone is happy.
  3. Cardano has a fixed cost of 340 ADA per epoch (five days) taken from minted blocks (rewards) if created during this period. This pool returns the fixed pool cost of 340 ADA per epoch to delegates, ensuring our competitiveness with larger pools. It is far too expensive to take ~500 USD every five days from any rewards received. DAWN uses a different, fairer and far cheaper mechanism for sustainability.

This small pool has been designed to provide similar returns to large pools. Learn more below about how our ~10,270 ADA delegated provides the same projected returns as pools with 30,000,000 ADA delegated. Cardano Foundation provide a helpful calculator so you can explore why this is so. Here are the metrics to use in the advanced tab:

  1. 1,000 ADA investment on your part
  2. Pool size (circa 10,270 ADA as of April 20th)
  3. Pool pledge (circa 4,880 ADA as of April 25th)
  4. Pool fixed daily fee (0 rather than 68 ADA)
  5. Pool operator percentage (1.83%)
  6. Projected delegate rewards = 4.64%
  7. Comparison: rewards for a pool with 10,000,000 ADA = 4.64%
  8. Comparison: rewards for a pool with 20,000,000 ADA = 4.64%
  9. Comparison: rewards for a pool with 30,000,000 ADA = 4.64%

Learn More About Our Specific Competitive Choices

The price changes in ADA for 2021 have left an interesting imbalance in the market. While every pool has a fixed 340 fee plus the percentage fee they choose to charge, the fixed fee is worth a very different amount today than it was three months ago. Assuming a pool creates blocks in an epoch, the fixed fee returns almost 100 USD per day, which is more than is necessary for pool operation by a wide margin inside the parameters of how most pools are currently being run. More importantly, from the perspective of sustainability, the duration of the fixed fee in declared ADA – now dramatically disassociated from market exchange pricing – is unknown.

To put it bluntly: the fixed fee is too high. The fixed fee damages the ability of small pools to be competitive. Pools cannot depend on the fixed fee. The fairer determination of cost to scale is the variable percentage fee pools charge, which has far lower impact on pool delegates, while providing a scaling revenue more aligned with sustainable operation.

The question was how to address this from the perspective of DAWN, a long term investment vehicle open to third parties. We want to ensure fellow travelers in the pool have an equitable journey and access to shared benefits. The conclusion is simple:

  1. The percentage fee is the appropriate mechanism to build pool resources for sustainable infrastructure and security audits
  2. The fixed fee is priced too high while ADA has a resistance level of circa 120, as today
  3. Regardless, the fixed fee is arbitrary and controlled by IOHK rather than pool operators

DAWN has a simple mechanism: when we mint a block (or more than a block) in an epoch, the 340 ADA fixed fee will be distributed to delegates based on the size of their delegation, minus the cost of transfer. The pool percentage fee, having a far lessor but pool controlled impact on delegates, is the determinant by which we calculated and continue to calculate sustainability of offering access to third parties.

This decision shows that at DAWN's current pool size and with current pool pledge, a new entrant would have access to the same projected returns as delegating to a pool of 10,000,000, 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 ADA over the long term.

Naturally this type of calculation is not favorable to parties who rely on the fixed fee for their calculation of sustainability or – given the spike in pools recently – potential large profit. It depends on pool positioning. But it is something people should know, and they should include in their calculation of determining which pool to delegate too.

That fixed 340 ADA fee is really the determinate of viability for smaller pools and smaller investors, and we believe it is with such pools that we maintain a healthy, sustainable ecosystem.

DAWN will publish the relay and block node configuration scripts to (a) help others along and (b) solicit your feedback for improvements. As soon as the pool generates enough revenue we will be obtaining third-party audits.

Remember that by design in Cardano your assets staked to any pool are completely safe. The only party who would suffer loss of capital if the cold key machine was breached is the pool manager, Shane Coughlan. What you could lose is about two epoch (ten days) of token appreciation if the pool was taken offline and you decided to move your assets elsewhere. With an average of ~5% annual return in the Cardano ecosystem the negative exposure on your potential rewards would be circa ~0.1%.

We cannot assume liability for that but we intend to ensure the continuity of the pool for all our benefit.

DAWN is currently hosted in a location powered by solar and solar battery. The solar is a high efficiency system from Panasonic providing 5.6kw (5kw average). The battery is a 5.6kw/h system from Panasonic. The primary server consumes 300~400w on average. This is a zero-emission pool.

  1. Primary Server is CentOS 8.3
  2. Ryzen 3900X
  3. 64 GB Ram
  4. 2 TB PCIe 4 SSD
  5. VMs hosted on 64 TB Raid-Z2
  6. Fiber network @ 2 GB/s

This machine hosts the Relay node and the Block node as KVM virtual machines.

  1. Both nodes run Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with 6 Virtual Cores
  2. Each machine has 12 GB Ram
  3. Each machine has a 200 GB QCOW2 virtual disk
  4. The machines have the usual hardening: limited ports, firewall, disabled root access via SSH and non-essential services removed.

The cold node (private keys) are kept on a VM with the same basic specification as above plus:

  1. It is on an encrypted cold machine in another secure location.
  2. The node has no network access regardless of being isolated (Ubuntu 20.04 disabled plus VM networking bridge disabled).
  3. The node has no discovery on bluetooth, wireless etc.
  4. The node is backed up to a 480 GB SSD, also encrypted, and kept in another location.

shane@opendawn.com
Book a meeting: https://calendly.com/shanecoughlan
Something super urgent? +81 80 4035 8083
More ways to contact me: https://www.opendawn.com/contact/