Meet the Nodes Behind stake.link
This week marks the conclusion of August, nearing the end of 2023-Q3, with much coming down the pike with Chainlink staking v0.2 and the role stake.link will play in this upcoming iteration of staking.
We’re proud to say that since the release of staking, we have seen no alerts raised with regard to the ETH/USD price feed. The node operators of the stake.link platform continue to rise to the occasion of navigating an ever-volatile market and continue to produce quality output. We’re privileged to work with such a talented group of teams.
As we push forward towards major network iterations, we’re excited to announce the start of a new series of interviews called ‘Meet the Nodes’. Our focus of this initiative is to showcase the member nodes of stake.link, what motivates them, what they see in their future, in Chainlink’s future, and the future of stake.link.
With that said, we’re thrilled to begin this series speaking to a team based out of the Netherlands, Matrixed.Link.
—---------------------
Stake.Link <> Matrixed.Link Discussion with Kubilay Özçelik
Q: Matrixed.Link. You guys joined the Chainlink Network as an official node operator in April 2022, your one year anniversary. How’s the process been, how have things been getting to where you are today?
KÖ: It’s been great, especially our onboarding process. It came with its challenges as April 2022 was the middle of the bear market, and not as many jobs were coming in at the time. It was tough for the first 6 months, but since then, we began to see a flood of job requests. It’s been smooth sailing ever since, but like I said, not without its challenges.
We also appreciate the support from fellow node operators helping us out whenever we have trouble with something or we need to seek guidance. There’s a lot of resources there with great people.
It ultimately comes down to the quality of the community, and it’s a great community to be in. I couldn't picture myself being in any other community operating nodes now that I’m in the Chainlink community. It’s very rewarding, starting out as community members, running nodes as a community node operator and ultimately becoming a verified node operator.
Q: What’s crazy to think about is how April 2022 feels like a few months ago. It’s been a year since Matrixed.Link became a full fledged, verified node. How did you come from being community members to where you and the team are today?
KÖ: The story began when we became a community node operator gathering jobs in the Discord, which got us acquainted with Patrick Collins two weeks into February 2021. We were helping people out in Discord, getting our own nodes set up and participating in node discourse. We got in contact with Patrick, set up a video call, and this is what gave us a big boost of confidence and drive to continue operating nodes. People who know him know how energizing Patrick is, and it gave us a lot of positive energy connecting with him. Our first project that got us into running Chainlink nodes is actually GainsNetwork. We basically started our journey of running Chainlink nodes with Seb, the founder of GainsNetwork. To this day we still run oracles on multiple chains for them. The next big thing that came after that was the Oracle Olympics #0. With the help of Eric and Scott we rolled into the competition.
It was a great experience. We knew after the Oracle Olympics what we had to pay attention to in operating Chainlink nodes.
Something we were not aware of yet, but gradually learned during and after the Olympics on mainnet, was that we were one of the first node operators on Polygon Mainnet thanks to the help of Eric and Ian at LinkPool. When the Chainlink token was not yet released officially, we were privately one of the first NOPs to get the official Polygon Chainlink token, which was awesome. We had to send Ian LINK tokens on Ethereum Mainnet, and then we got them back on Polygon.
It was all quite an experience. The Oracle Olympics was really well put together. We didn’t make the cut in the end, we ended somewhere in the middle. We got acquainted with a lot of Node Operators and people from Chainlink Labs as a result. We still have regular contact with many of them.
As we grow as a node operator, we tend to be in closer contact with more of our colleague node operators. We even got the opportunity during Oracle Olympics #1 to give a speech to all the participating node operators about what to pay attention to while running/maintaining Chainlink nodes.
Q: Anything that you care to share what you guys are working on that’s special these days? Any cool alpha?
We’ve actually been working on something known as “Endpoint-as-a-Service.” The alpha has been running for the last 6-8 months with GainsNetwork on Polygon and Arbitrum. We support about seven chains right now with our own node infrastructure. We aim to release it to the public by the end of the year, but as you know timelines can change.. This is very rewarding in itself from being a Chainlink node operator and evolving into a service provider.
Q: Why did you choose to participate in the stake.link ecosystem? What excites you about the future of stake.link?
KÖ: When it comes to staking, we have always wanted to offer the ability to the community to stake on our nodes. With the release of stake.link this is now possible. Liquid Staking Tokens are this new financial instrument that has been released in the past year which is a breakthrough in the capabilities of DeFi and enabling value in the ecosystem.
We’re hyped about the new possibilities this financial instrument creates. We’ve also been working with a lot of LSTs to set up Ethereum validators, becoming node operators and running oracles for them. This new ecosystem will surely thrive in the coming future, and stake.Link has an edge on other protocols as it consists of battle-tested Chainlink node operators. The feeling of participating in a first of its kind LST platform for LINK staking is something we are very excited about. With the current lock-up system, such a system is very desirable.
When you also look at who the participants of stake.link are, they’re the best of the best of the NOPs, with the best track record, the best up-time, the best infrastructure, everything. Having that initial team of NOPs setting up the platform to also offer different services such as the index token, liquid ETH staking, and other liquid staking tokens of other platforms – this is a breakthrough in the LST ecosystem as I see it.
Most LST platforms don't have the edge that the stake.link platform has. Having the expertise of all the high performing Chainlink node operators bundled together, is a big plus to have as a platform.
Running Chainlink nodes successfully is the most difficult thing you can do – in all of DeFi.
With regard to the future of stake.link, what excites us the most is the novel products that will be created on top of LSTs. Having tokens that you can restake in different protocols opens up a new path for DeFi.
It only takes one mind to come up with a novel idea. This novel idea brings forth a niche use case for existing applications and before you know it a whole new narrative has been created. The crypto community and ecosystem really works in a beautiful way. When you think about it, that’s awesome.
—---------------------
This wraps up the first edition of our Meet the Nodes series. We thank the Matrixed.Link team and Kubilay for their time, and we’re proud to work with teams of their caliber every day.
For more information on Matrixed.Link, please see the relevant links and documentation below:
About Matrixed Link
Matrixed.Link is a Dutch based DLT service provider aiming to provide the most reliable and secure data on-chain. The team is working around the clock to help the Web3 ecosystem evolve. Matrixed.Link has played a major role in creating hybrid infrastructure that combines official Chainlink Price Feeds with a custom-built Chainlink DON. They have also taken an active role in contributing to the Chainlink ecosystem by creating custom DONs that leverage the Chainlink Network.
Website: https://www.matrixedlink.io/
Telegram: https://t.me/MatrixedLink
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatrixedLink / @MatrixedLink
Chainlink Ecosystem Page: https://www.chainlinkecosystem.com/ecosystem/matrixed-link
About stake.link
stake.link is the first-of-its-kind liquid delegated staking platform delivering DeFi composability and Chainlink Staking. Built by premier Chainlink ecosystem developer LinkPool, powered by the top Chainlink node operators, and governed by the stake.link DAO, stake.link's extensible, pooled staking architecture is architected to support the vision of Chainlink Staking and to extend participation in the Chainlink Network.
Website: https://stake.link/
https://stake.link/Telegram: https://t.me/stakedotlink
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stakedotlink / @stakedotlink