Recap of Avalanche AMA with Allnodes Founder Sephiroth

Elvis Tile
6 min readJan 21, 2021

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On 20th January, 2021, Avalanche hosted an AMA with Allnodes on their Telegram Community channel. Allnodes Founder Sephiroth discussed in depth how allnodes is playing a major role in the growth of node hosting, staking, upcoming plans and much more!

In November, 2020 Allnodes Launched Avalanche Integration to Enable Full, End-to-End Hosting and Staking Services. They offered 3 free months of node hosting services to 100 Avalanche community members. As of 20th January Avalanche had a total of 764 validators.

A collection of questions were sampled from the Avalanche Twitter community and these were the best 10 that were highlighted during the AMA.

Question #1 by @emcs1974 on Twitter:

What is the uptime, on average, during the staking period of Avalanche nodes at Allnodes?

Sephiroth,

Average uptime for Avalanche validator nodes hosted on Allnodes is 99.99%-100.00%.

Question #2 by @ETCMINER on Twitter:

How do you manage your business with those extremely low prices. Do you get any support by the teams you deal to host?

Sephiroth,

As we announced in November current prices are our promo campaign dedicated to Avalanche listing on Allnodes, but even with regular pricing our pricing will be still very competitive.

About support. Yes we got support from Avalanche team regarding announcements of our collaboration. We offered 3 months free of charge service for 100 nodes and It helped a lot to get attention.

Question #3 by y @_burcusan_ on Twitter: D:

Do you perform hardening practices on your hosted nodes in terms of security? Do you install any intrusion prevention software such as fail2ban on nodes?

Sephiroth,

We take security seriously and of course we use all possible methods to protect staking keys and node itself from unauthorized access. Fail2ban is just one of them. And of course it is impossible to connect to the node using password, we use SSL keys.

Question #4 by @Mrttdnmz on Twitter:

Where did you get the inspiration for this project idea? And what influence will we have on the crypto industry due to the project?

Sephiroth,

In 2017 I had several masternodes. Besides I participated in one ICO and got A LOT of nodes of that coin. It would be extremely hard to manage them without deep technical knowledge so I decided to run a service that could run them for me in convenient way. That is how Allnodes was born.

I personally think that Allnodes brings adoption to crypto industry so people without any tech knowledge can get running Avalanche node in just 3 clicks and support the network with their stake.

Question #5 by @Sumo4676 on Twitter:

Can you explain the advantages of staking on your platform over competitors? What is the motivation for users to be able to use your platform forever?

Sephiroth,

I think our main advantages are:

1) Our UI is nice

2) Our pricing model is one of the cheapest in industry

3) We have more than 9000 nodes hosted and we know our stuff.

4) We have outstanding reputation in industry. Check our feedback on our main page. It is feedback of real users.

5) We have a lot of features (Especially for Avalanche): free monitoring, alerts in Telegram and Discord about node’s health, 3 clicks nodes hosting, check website where you can check the health of your node as well. This is not a rush job. We have spent a lot of time integrating Avalanche to our platform. And we do same for other coins that we list. We prefer quality over quantity.

6) And finally we do our job with love.

Question #6 by @emcs1974 on Twitter:

What kind of users is Allnodes hosting service recommended for?

Sephiroth,

First of all, Allnodes is recommended for non-tech people. But also it is recommended for everybody who is interested to spend their time on more interesting things than hardware setup and infinite node support.

Question #7 by @instcn on Twitter:

Does Allnodes support the hot upgrade of avalanche nodes, how does Allnodes ensure the stability of nodes, and what is the price?

Sephiroth,

Allnodes provides COMPLETELY FREE maintenance which includes regular upgrades of Avalanche nodes. We have our own monitoring system and we monitor all our nodes to be sure that they are running 24/7. That is how you get such amazing uptime on Allnodes. If you host your node on Allnodes the only thing you should worry about is to re-stake your AVAX instantly when your staking is finished. You even don’t need to host node from scratch in such case.

Question #8 by @Leandro84D on Twitter:

Which Allnodes plan would you recommend running an Avalanche node? The Basic or the Advanced? And why?

Sephiroth,

I personally run my own Avalanche nodes on Advanced plan because it provides more decentralization. On Advanced plan we currently offer up to 15 different locations, while on Basic plan we offer only 1 location. Anyway both plans are reliable so it is up to you what to choose. More details about plans can be found here: https://help.allnodes.com/en/articles/4114649-the-difference-between-hosting-plans.

Question #9 by @feoniixs on Twitter:

What is your vision for the future of Allnodes pertaining to Avalanche? Will you also offer nodes for potential subnets?

Sephiroth,

We have plans to actively support Avalanche and of course we will continue adding Avalanche features on our platform. We will definitely offer nodes for potential subnets if our customers ask need this service.

Question #10 by @muhammetselimfe on Twitter:

What do you think about the effect of Allnodes on decentralization? Could a technical problem for Allnodes affect the Avalanche network?

Sephiroth,

About decentralization I personally think that Allnodes also attract new customers who will never launch a node without such service as ours. There will be always amount of people who prefer to run node themselves. Also we are not the only service around. More services — more decentralization.

Besides on Advanced plan we provide different providers and locations so it supports inner decentralization on Allnodes.

About second question: if I understand right how Avalanche network works, nothing bad will happen even if all Allnodes nodes go offline for some time.

TELEGRAM ANSWERED QUESTIONS:

How can I host my node on your platform? Do I have to give you access to my Avalanche wallet or just send the funds to your platform? What are the advantages of doing it with you?

Sephiroth,

Here you can check the full instruction: https://help.allnodes.com/en/articles/4565844-how-to-setup-avalanche-validator-node-on-allnodes

Your coins stay in your wallet. There is no risk to your funds. As there is no slashing in Avalanche the worst thing that can happen that you don’t receive your reward if uptime is less than 60.00% at the end of staking period.

Does allnodes have an Assurance Fund for the its customers when for example: a data breach or an hack happens into the platform?

Will the costumers will be insured with their funds/delegated/ stake funds?

Sephiroth,

Currently we do not have assurance fund for our customers but we usually solve all issues directly with our customers so they are not left unhappy. There is no stake risk if you host a node on Allnodes. Our service is non-custodial so we don’t have access to your funds.

How to learn to use nodes and all the utilities that both platforms offer with respect to nodes and masternosdes? some recommendations? guides for beginners? How much investment is required? , What are the risks?

Sephiroth,

You can buy 2000 AVAX on exchange and then follow this guide: https://help.allnodes.com/en/articles/4565844-how-to-setup-avalanche-validator-node-on-allnodes

It will give you 9–11% APY on your stake.

Is allnodes planning to launch a governance token?

Sephiroth,

Right now we do not have such plans but anything can be changed in the future. Who knows?

Are there any limitations for hosting Avalanche nodes at Allnodes?

No limitations. You can host any amount of nodes as you want.

About Avalanche

Avalanche is an open-source platform for launching decentralized finance applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in one interoperable, highly scalable ecosystem. Developers who build on Avalanche can easily create powerful, reliable, and secure applications and custom blockchain networks with complex rulesets or build on existing private or public subnets.

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