Summary
Name of the node operator: Finoa Consensus Services
Location of headquarters: Berlin, Germany
Network: Ethereum; Gnosis Chain
Revenue share percentage requested: 50.00%
Motivation
The future: We see Ethereum as the most important smart contract platform. Ethereum is the most battle-proven and decentralized Layer 1 and we fully believe in and want to support its future. ETH 2.0 to us is the most important current development in the crypto space, and are highly motivated to join as a node operator and enable more ETH-holders to take part in Ethereum’s evolution to Proof of Stake.
Ethereum also clearly remains a favorite amongst institutional investors which make up Finoa’s core customer base, with already over 3.5% of the circulating supply locked in funds and exchange traded products, rapidly catching up to Bitcoin’s 4.5%. We believe that staking will serve as the key source of low-risk yield to attract the next wave of crypto investors. Many challenges stand in the way of serving large swathes of risk-off, income-seeking capital, but it’s clear that liquid staking is a key building block for income-focused funds and exchange traded products of the future.
The past: For over three years Finoa has served as an enabler of institutional investment at the bleeding edge of blockchain innovation, providing custody and staking support for several base-layer blockchains from the launch of their mainnets (NEAR, FLOW, MINA, SKL, ROSE). Of course we have always supported Ethereum as well. The in-custody staking offering is currently being offered via partnerships with Blockdaemon, Figment, and Chorus One. The next opportunity we see to apply our experience and expertise with blockchain infrastructure is to become a node operator for Ethereum liquid staking. This will allow us to eventually integrate liquid ETH staking into our custody product to better serve our custody clients and to improve the Ethereum ecosystem with institutional-grade in-custody staking services.
The present: We have at our disposal a highly experienced team lead by Andreas Dittrich and members of his former team at T-Systems MMS (Deutsche Telekom), where they established staking services for the first time dating back to 2019. The rest of our staking team has many decades of collective experience in web services and crypto infrastructure, and is further strengthened by the support of Finoa’s 100+ employees. Finoa is Europe’s biggest and fully regulated crypto custodian.
Discussion
As always, we invite StakeWise DAO members as well as the members of the existing node operator set to share thoughts & comment on the operator CV.
