In September, we announced support for the Oasis Network, launched new monthly eth2 and Substrate ecosystem updates, published our first customer story, and proposed a set of criteria via governance to move the NEAR network forward to a fully decentralized mainnet launch. Read on for details and more news from the herd!
1. Bison Trails Supports the Oasis Network and the Creation of a Responsible Data Economy
Oasis, a privacy-first PoS decentralized computing network, aims to give users control of their data while supporting the development of privacy-preserving apps and services. Running a validator on the Bison Trails platform enables customers to earn participatory rewards for helping secure the network. Read more in our announcement post or in Modern Consensus.
“Bison Trails brings their expertise in infrastructure and staking services to the Oasis Network. They’re fantastic to work with, and we’re excited to have their top-tier team as members of the Oasis Community.”
—JERNEJ KOS, DIRECTOR OF THE OASIS FOUNDATION
2. NuCypher Staking Scenarios
NuCypher Mainnet launch is days away. Our guide to configuring a node’s NU token stake provides the key decisions and their implications, and four staking scenarios to help you understand the benefits of each approach. Read more.
3. Read the first edition of our new eth2 update by Viktor Bunin, Protocol Specialist
Viktor’s eth2 update provides inside access to our thoughts on the most important information to know about eth2, as well as our enterprise product offering, as we prepare for Phase 0 (the beacon chain launch). Read more.
“The swift arrival of Ceremony Day is dependent upon two things: the stability of eth2’s Medalla testnet and at least one successful dress rehearsal / dry run (deposit and genesis testnet)... We currently anticipate a mid-November mainnet launch and are preparing to help our customers participate.”
—VIKTOR BUNIN
4. We also launched a Substrate ecosystem update from Elias Simos, Protocol Specialist
Elias’ Substrate update includes key developments—from governance to parachain launches—across the ecosystem of protocols built on Substrate’s modular blockchain framework including Polkadot, Kusama, and Edgeware. Read more.
“Getting a secure, robust, and scalable blockchain network up and running is only the beginning of the Polkadot journey. A crucial next step is seeding the network with activity and valuable assets. To that end, a lot of activity is happening in the trustless bridge space, primarily prompted by grants from the Web3 Foundation. This activity will eventually enable non-native assets to flow to the Polkadot ecosystem and vice versa.”
—ELIAS SIMOS
5. Bison Trails powers ZKValidator’s community-focused Staking as a Service that promotes privacy research and participation in governance on emerging PoS networks
Learn about the origin of ZKValidator and how Bison Trails facilitates their participation across Cosmos, Polkadot, Kusama, and NEAR in our first published customer story.
"ZKValidator is a very real use case of how we can help a team of a few people become as powerful as a team of 50 people. Bison Trails is proud to support ZKValidator across multiple networks with our infrastructure platform, removing all of the technical barriers of running their own community-funded validators. It’s very cool to see people with the economic and political know-how of governing protocols serve on the Kusama Council and the NEAR Validator Advisory board while we run the infrastructure. This fits perfectly with our mission of democratizing access to blockchains."
—JOE LALLOUZ, CEO OF BISON TRAILS IN THE CRYPTONOMIST
Teams choose Bison Trails to:
✅ Automatically distribute node clusters we manage on their behalf across major platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
✅ Earn rewards for helping secure networks with the tokens staked to their node clusters by their community
✅ Use our fully-managed platform. We handle network upgrades, security, availability, and all aspects of node operation for customers like Anna and the ZKValidator team, so they can focus on their mission.
Each profile in our “Meet the Herd” series is the story of a member’s professional path: how they started their career and made their way to the world of blockchain.
Meet the Herd: Product Manager Jaron Parnala
Jaron shares the story of his journey to product management and crypto, his engagement with the blockchain community, and how he stays calm and focused. Read more
Meet the Herd: Content Strategist Casson Rosenblatt
Casson explains the role of content strategy, her focus on clarity, how she started working at Bison Trails, and tips for effective communication. Read more
"For all intents and purposes, DeFi was not a thing two years ago–it was just a few folks at a meetup who were talking about this idea that we could have finance that was built using smart contracting platforms and systems. [Now] new protocols, new pieces of technology that fit into the different protocols–everything from liquidity pools to automated market-making to lending to insurance: literally everything across the board is sort of being built in the decentralized finance space."
—JOE LALLOUZ SPEAKING TO FINANCE MAGNATES IN SEPTEMBER, 2020
Thanks for reading! ✨
– Mark Forscher / Head of Brand & Design
Bison Trails is a blockchain infrastructure platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company based in New York City. We built a platform for anyone who wants to participate in 20 new chains effortlessly.
We also make it easy for anyone building Web 3.0 applications to connect to blockchain data from 30 protocols with QT. Our goal is for the entire blockchain ecosystem to flourish by providing robust infrastructure for the pioneers of tomorrow.
In January, 2021, we announced Bison Trails will be joining Coinbase to accelerate our mission to provide easy-to-use blockchain infrastructure, now as a standalone product line as part of Coinbase. The Bison Trails platform will continue to support our customers. With Coinbase’s backing, we will enhance our infrastructure platform and make it even easier to participate in decentralized networks and build applications that connect to blockchain data. Read more.
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