“We do what we say and we say what we do.”

Edouard Lavidalle of Stakin doesn’t mince words. He doesn’t have to. The Europe-based team can point to a proven track record as a validator on the mainnets of five major networks and many more testnets. Thanks to that experience, they know what it takes to build network architecture, govern a network and cultivate a community.

“We really look forward to reapplying the same best practices within the ecosystem,” says Lavidalle. “And if we are elected as P-Reps, we will of course give back to the ecosystem as well.”

A common passion

Stakin is a four person operation. London-based Lavidalle and Lionel Rebibo have backgrounds in finance and have worked on building blockchain-based derivative instruments. Paris-based David Derhy of eToro educates traders about cryptocurrency and blockchain; he’s also written articles on ICON. And in Portugal, Tiago Machado is the team’s full stack developer. What the team shares, says Lavidalle, is a common passion for blockchain and decentralized finance.”

Though relatively new to the P-Rep campaign, having thrown their hats into the ring only last month, they’ve been following the ICON project since the ICO. They are drawn to the platform for two reasons in particular. The first is ICON’s innovative “delegated proof of contribution” model. “We feel this model could become a game changer in the blockchain space,” says Lavidalle. “It can create a virtuous circle incentivising all the key parts to develop the infrastructure and the ecosystem.”

They also dig ICON’s interconnectivity, seeing it as key to blockchain’s ultimate scalability. We envision a future where rather than one blockchain ruling them all with a high TPS, you have lots of blockchains communicating with each other – some public, some private – and they will have different parameters based on what those blockchains are for,” says Lavidalle. They will need to communicate with a central hub, and ICON could play an important role in the future in this regard.”

The team really likes Fee 2.0 since it could save DApp users from going through the horrible UX that plagues blockchain in general. We believe that ICON might — with this differentiated model — become the blockchain of choice for crypto-developers in the future,” says Lavidalle. What would be great is if [the general public] could use a blockchain without even knowing they are using a blockchain. I think this is the future and what ICON is moving towards with its Fee 2.0 proposal.”

Giving back

Stakin is campaigning on a six-point program: highly-reliable infrastructure, a strong track record, helpful product development, community enhancement, transparent governance involvement and giving back to the ecosystem.

Lavidalle boils down the job of P-Rep to two things. The first is to do your main job, which is to actually run a reliable infrastructure, to maintain the stability and security of the network,” he says. And then there is the community and ecosystem development aspect.”

For the first, the team plans to maintain top-notch infrastructure based on its expertise and what they’ve done for other blockchain networks such as Tezos, Cosmos, Irisnet, Terra Money and Algorand, where they are validators. They will use a diversified panel of at least three leading cloud providers and Tier-3 data centers for the team’s highly secured physical servers.

As for the community and ecosystem, the team thinks it knows what it’s doing there, too. Lavidalle says, In terms of project development or community education, that’s something we’ve been doing for other protocols and we want to do it for ICON as well.”

In addition to educational and community-building exercises such as writing articles, hosting social media discussions and organizing meetups, Stakin also plans to give back by reinvesting part of their P-Rep rewards into DApps and Ecosystem Expansion Projects (EEPs). We think it’s in our interest and the interest of the whole ecosystem to actually contribute back part of our ICX towards the financing of some projects that will be built on ICON,” says Lavidalle. Depending on how much we manage to receive under delegation, we really want to refinance and reintroduce part of this money into the ecosystem.”

The team will build a delegator dashboard so ICONists can track assets and rewards. But Lavidalle suggests they may not stop there. He says, Why not think about building a decentralized asset management or derivatives project in the future as the network stabilizes? Because that’s something we know how to do.”

Lavidalle says there are lots of great teams running for P-Rep. Accordingly, voters should diversify their stake. Firstly, when you delegate, you don’t want to have all your assets in the same basket,” he says. And secondly, you’re also choosing how your network will be decentralized, and it’s not the best choice to give too much voting power to one actor versus the other.”