Recently, I decided to interview Tim Ogilvie, the CEO of Staked. According to Staked’s website, they “operate the most secure, performance, and cost-effective block production nodes for decentralized PoS protocols on behalf of institutional investors. Our multi-tier signing and listening node architecture delivers stakeholders the ideal combination of security, scalability and decentralization”. Tim was able to provide some insight into a few of the questions I had for him.

Tim, can you explain your role at Staked.us and what your underlying motivation was for deciding to participate in the P-Rep campaign?

I am the CEO and founder of Staked. Staked works with investors to run technical infrastructure for the projects cryptocurrency they hold and want to interact with. Generally, we run the technical infrastructure while the investors can focus on what they do well: focus on governance and the future of the network.

Staked has some very large investors including Coinbase, Pantera Capital, and many more. Based on your proposal, there is not much to go on what you plan to do for ICON. Would you care to explain what Staked plans to contribute to the ICON ecosystem?

We do several things: Run technical infrastructure securely and reliably. Product content regularly that highlights the projects where we run infrastructure. We product a weekly newsletter with thousands of subscribers, all of whom are investors in crypto, an active Twitter account with thousands of followers, and are actively engaged with major crypto investors. Build technical tools that make it easier for crypto investors to participate in proof-of-stake networks. This includes alerting across all the networks we support, reporting for tax and fund administration and tools that integrate with wallets to make it easier to stake.

Staked plans to run a “highly secure infrastructure” for ICON as per your proposal. With many P-Rep teams getting experience from the testnet and creating automated deployment scripts to jumpstart a citizen node in a matter of minutes, can you explain how Staked plans to maintain “100% uptime SLA”?

We run infrastructure on 16 different networks today. The core technology that we’ve developed allows us to deploy nodes across multiple data centers, backup the chain hourly, monitor and optimize performance in the face of varying technical challenges, and ensure continuous uptime. The tools that we’ve developed for other chains are adapted for Icon, which means we have a significant head start versus other chains.

Staked currently provides staking and lending services for a wide array of crypto assets. Can you provide some insight into what drew Staked to ICON?

We work with some of the smartest investors in crypto to help them participate in staking and governance. They are big fans of ICON which got us started.

Staked has mentioned that it “pays 90% of the block rewards to delegates”. Does Staked plan to follow this same business model with ICON?

Our business model varies based on the nuances of the chain. In the case of ICON, the block rewards from staking are paid directly to the investor. So they receive 100% of the block rewards from staking. We do not “pay for votes” or otherwise pay for node rewards to people who vote for the Staked node.

If you are interested in learning more about Staked or want to reach out to Staked, feel free to check out the links below.

Website, Twitter, “Seeking Yield” Newsletter, Proposal