Many people believe only traders, who analyze and time the market correctly, are the ones that make money in the crypto world. Well, this may be true though not completely, as the crypto world does offer a lot of other opportunities, apart from investing, where individuals and teams can make a good amount of money. One such way is by running a masternode.

What is a Masternode?

Masternodes are incentivized cryptocurrency wallets or full nodes that record and keep a complete copy of the Blockchain. Masternodes are functionally different from other normal nodes as they perform a variety of functions, such as increasing privacy or taking part in governance and voting, in addition to keeping a record of full Blockchain and replaying blocks. Whilst there is no prerequisite to becoming a masternode, to ensure that they don’t turn malicious, the masternode owner needs to commit or collateralize a certain amount of the coins. As well as these minimum coins, the individual also needs a VPS or server to host the masternode wallet 24/7 on a dedicated IP address and enough disk storage to save the Blockchain data.

Why Invest in a Masternode?

A masternode owner has more power and responsibilities than just a normal cryptocurrency holder. Being a masternode operator, the individual has a say in the process and decisions that are being taken for the betterment of the coin. Besides these powers and responsibilities, masternodes also get an opportunity to make some great profits, which may be a combination of passive income (block rewards) and rewards for service providing which are distributed on daily, weekly or monthly basis depending on network specifications.

XSN Masternode Network

Just like others, Stakenet’s masternode can be run on any computer that runs an XSN wallet with a locked balance of 15,000 XSN. These coins act as the required collateral to run the masternode. Having an XSN masternode, the operators become eligible for multiple income sources against the services rendered. These include:

- Block Rewards: For providing their services to the network, masternodes will be rewarded with 45% of the block rewards.

- Stakenet dx trading fees: As masternodes will be playing an important role in the functioning of Stakenet dx (the trading framework using lightning swaps), they will receive 100% of the trading fees.

- TOR service fees: At Stakenet, masternodes will also receive 100% of all fees for the TOR service they provide.

This doesn’t end here. Along with block rewards, as Stakenet offers additional fees for every service that a masternode runs, there is more potential for earning other types of fees over the years once Stakenet utilizes its network for decentralization. Being code agnostic, Stakenet offers a perfect platform for developers to launch their DApp’s and to utilize the masternode network services which in turn, would offer additional income for the operators.

Stakenet’s Masternode-as-a-Service (MNaaS)

As setting up and maintaining a masternode requires familiarity with Linux commands, novice users usually find it difficult to run a masternode. To provide a solution to this technical knowledge entry requirement and open the opportunity of running masternodes to a wider audience, Stakenet has launched MNaaS, a masternode hosting service. It provides a trustless service allowing users to own their private keys at all times so that the coins do not leave their local control wallets.

Using Stakenet’s cloud to run masternodes, operators can now save a lot of time, money and energy which they may have utilized setting up masternodes conventionally. Currently, XSN cloud supports only XSN coin whilst the cloud team are working on adding more coins in the days to come. Using this service has some clear advantages which include:

- Setting up of masternodes has just gotten easier with Stakenet’s MNaaS.

- Masternode operators now don’t need to maintain their own dedicated VPS and also provide additional storage, making it economical for the operator.

- It will allow operators to run multiple coin masternodes from one single platform with a monitoring service, thus giving them a better overview of their node activities.

- Stakenet Cloud, on behalf of the operator, will make sure that the VPS is always online and also will keep the wallet software up to date making things easier for the owners and also easing their worries about missing income due to downtime or incorrectly configured software.

- Being a trustless service, the operator has complete command over his own coins as the coins do not leave the locally controlled wallet.

- As Stakenet is creating a trustless world, masternode services are bound to increase, thus creating a high potential for earnings.

As Stakenet believes masternodes are critical elements for a successful decentralized world, its hosting service is definitely a game changer. With MNaaS, a wider audience can now become masternode operators and thus help Stakenet to achieve its vision in creating a trustless decentralized world.

Providing MNaaS is also beneficial for XSN ecosystem as a whole, as the XSN masternode network will hold databases and run full nodes of multiple blockchains, that will allow Stakenet to create a multicurrency wallet that can securely send, receive and confirm transactions on separate blockchains via one-click lightning swap solution. Therefore, MNaaS could play an important role in network stability and security.