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!

Company News

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.

Meet the Herd

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

MORE FROM THE HERD

• "My belief is that 5-10 years down the road, all the software products and services we use will have some form of blockchain... Folks won't even know they're using a blockchain." – Joe Lallouz, CEO of Bison Trails, at REIMAGINE2020
• Aaron Henshaw, CTO and co-founder of Bison Trails, was interviewed on the Relay Chain podcast on the current state of node infrastructure, risk management, and possibilities for the future.
• Viktor Bunin participated in the first NEAR Community Town Hall before proposing a set of criteria to move the network forward to a fully decentralized mainnet launch via governance.
• If you missed the NuCypher + Bison Trails WorkLock event, the video is now viewable on our guide to the WorkLock.
• Elias Simos created a WorkLock Dune Analytics dashboard. “Given ~40% of ETH participated via Coinlist, the total number of unique [participants] is probably north of 5.5k.”
• Viktor Bunin answered questions about tBTC and Keep active participation in an AMA on Keep’s Discord.
• Digital signatures are requirements for any working blockchain. Learn more about digital signatures and how they work in our in-depth explainer.
• We recently added a new team page and are actively hiring for several open positions.

"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: Pioneering Blockchain Infrastructure®

Bison Trails is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service company, based in New York City, specifically focused on blockchain participation. We’ve built a platform for anyone who wants to participate in new chains effortlessly (e.g. by running Cosmos Validators, Tezos Bakers, and Libra Validators, etc.)—without having to invest time and resources into developing any of the engineering, protocol, dev ops, or security competencies in-house. Our goal is for the entire blockchain ecosystem to flourish by providing robust infrastructure for the pioneers of tomorrow.

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