Last week we spoke with Bohdan Opryshko, the COO of Everstake, a team of experienced developers, financial experts and blockchain enthusiasts who run highly secure, reliable nodes for various PoS protocol cryptocurrencies.
With over 365,000 unique users and staking about $6.2 billion USD worth of crypto, Everstake is undoubtedly a major player in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, and we were very interested in knowing what opinions they had on the industry.
1. Tell us a little bit about Everstake - why is it interesting? What makes it unique?
Everstake is a team of experienced blockchain enthusiasts and developers, who are constantly working to guarantee blockchains' security. We have huge experience in validating, which is more than 4 years. Everstake actively participates as a validator in 45+ blockchains that include Cosmos, Polkadot, Icon, Solana, Cardano, Near, Mina, Tezos, EOS, Elrond, CasperLabs, Harmony, and many more. More than 365,000 stakers have already trusted us and we've accepted over $3,000,000,000 in digital assets as a stake. Our team is monitoring the network 24/7, which is why we demonstrate in all our blockchains an average of 99.99% of uptime and this guarantees that our delegators don't miss out on the rewards!
We also support the ecosystems of our blockchains by creating educational content and apps for staking. We cooperate with others, collaborate on DeFi projects and so on.
Apart from being a high-qualified validator of numerous networks, we see ourselves as an educational platform with more than 350 articles explaining in simple words how crypto and blockchain technology works. Furthermore, to facilitate decentralization, we translate our articles into Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish, Chinese and Vietnamese.
2. Why are you personally interested in cryptocurrencies and/or Blockchain?
The crypto industry and blockchain technology, in particular, provide more freedom of choice and a wide range of opportunities for the average person. One of them is the possibility to make cheap transactions at the ‘speed of thought’, another one is the opportunity to earn some passive income by trading or staking (trading requires a specific mindset while staking remains the safest and the easiest way to earn rewards for crypto holders so far).
Blockchain technology grants more freedom to express oneself as an artist or creator – by minting my own art/products as NFTs and giving it exposure within the international community. Anyone can build their very own NFT marketplace nowadays. Another exciting fact is that blockchain technology has already created a whole new job market – offering people worldwide the chance to work remotely, be creative, and earn well.
3. What was your first experience with crypto-currency or blockchain?
For many of us as individuals, the very first experience would have been trading Bitcoin or Ethereum years ago. However, we admit that the safest practice when it comes to earning income in crypto would be staking. This is why, years ago, we launched our nodes for PoS blockchains and concentrated our efforts on the idea of the staking platform, providing the high standard level service to delegators internationally. We also saw the huge potential of blockchain technology and since then strive to make mass adoption a reality.
4. What do you consider to be the best blockchain project (other than your own) and why?
In fact, it isn't easy to single out any one blockchain because each has its own characteristics and advantages. For example - Tezos has its own advantages and benefits. We, for our part, try to cooperate with blockchains that can solve problems because we will not be able to find or create one universal blockchain as it is unrealistic to cover all functions with one ecosystem.
5. If you could change one thing about blockchain and crypto in general, what would it be?
Mass adoption – we’d wish it was more real and factual. We’d like to see blockchain technology used every day and widely on all levels (in managing businesses, in approaching education, in decentralized governance, Defi, and so on).
6. What would you like to see implemented in blockchain? Either in your own project, in your favorite blockchain or in blockchain in general.
It would be exciting to witness actual decentralized governance implemented on the country/government level with the use of blockchain technology. This is already being discussed and put into work on some chains. Developers aim to propose a solution for governance based on blockchain for countries in Latin America, to improve a voting scheme and fight corruption on a bureaucratic level. If the extensive paperwork and digital records of the country’s bureaucratic machine could be set up on the blockchain, as well as the main lawyers' records – that might ease each citizens' life, as well as make the flow of decision-making / official data recording way more efficient, simple and fast.
7. What is a question you most often asked in relation to cryptocurrencies and blockchain?
Many users find the process of staking complicated, as well as understanding the basics of the technology itself, its use cases, and accordingly, its perspectives for future society. But most of the questions we get, in particular, are related to technical details of the staking coins / earning rewards process (given the nature of our business, which is staking).
8. What is the most common problem you have with blockchains/cryptocurrencies?
Despite the huge interest in adopting blockchain technology from the established financial industry, the subtext behind much of what is said about it is “it would probably be better if it just quietly disappeared.”
Banks make huge amounts of profit from playing the middle-man role, and because the cost is distributed among their millions of customers, end users usually pay very little individually.
Although its potentially revolutionary applications are apparent once one has made the effort to understand the principles of encryption and distributed ledgering behind blockchain, it takes a while, and a good bit of reading, before the “man on the street” can see what makes blockchains so potentially useful. Tech pundits talk about replacing the middle-man facilities traditionally provided by the financial services industry – such as clearing payments and fraud prevention. But as far as many are concerned, banks provide this service adequately well, at an apparently low cost to the end user.
9. How would you (or how did you) solve this problem?
Our main task is to support the infrastructure and educate people, to tell what a blockchain is and how it can help us, and we are sure that it will help us solve some of the problems we and other teams face.
10. Where do you think that blockchain could be best utilized?
In all sorts of data records – medical, government, lawyers’ records. Also, it definitely aims to replace the traditional banking system, simplifying transactions between users worldwide and reducing the fees significantly.
11. Where do you see the future of blockchain?
Initially, blockchain was used as a ledger for cryptocurrency transactions and we dreamed about other use cases for blockchain technology, and now all these dreams and suggestions have come true. Blockchain is now used not only in the banking and financial sphere but in healthcare, security & insurance, travel industries and so on. Of course, these use cases are not a common thing now, and ordinary people have no idea how to use blockchain, especially in these spheres, and that's the future of blockchain – its mass adoption and usage in various spheres of our life. What is blockchain and how it works should be known to not only crypto enthusiasts and traders but regular people as well. Moreover, it’s hard to predict in what spheres blockchain technology will be used, nevertheless, we may claim that the notion of blockchain should become an ordinary one for everyone.
We thank Bohdan and the other members of Everstake for taking the time to answer our questions. Be sure to check out Everstake, particularly if you are looking to stake your crypto or educate yourself on the topic of crypto ownership and staking.
Do you know of an interesting blockchain project that would be interested in having an interview with us? Feel free to send me an email, we’d love to hear your thoughts and publish them on our blog.
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