Meet the SPO: Ian

Hello and thanks for taking the time to check out Hephaestus Stake Pool. I am a single pool operator based in the United Kingdom and member of the Cardano Single Pool Alliance (CSPA) and Extra Small Pool Alliance (xSPO).

As an ADA holder since March 2018 I have followed the developments in the ecosystem closely for over 7 years now and during 2021 I decided that I wanted to give something back and to challenge myself to learn something new. With that in mind I set out to learn Linux and how to set up a Cardano Stake Pool on the Cardano Testnet. After 10 months on Testnet I finally launched HEPHY pool in February 2022.

As someone who has followed Cardano for over 7 years now I can appreciate how much it has grown over the years and how fast it is now growing. So much so that it is hard for even long-time community members to even keep up with it all and so I also aim to provide educational content for people new to the space.

Get to know the SPO…

    • ADA holder since March 2018

    • Delegator from day one of the ITN December 2019

    • Began learning Linux January 2021

    • Completed Cardano Stake Pool course and began running a Pi-based testnet pool for 10 months between April 2021-February 2022

    • Began running a NUC-based mainnet relay in December 2021

    • Launched Hephaestus Stake Pool (HEPHY) in Febraury 2022

    • Passed the Cardano Certified Blockchain Associate (CBCA) exam in February 2025

    • Single Stake Pool Operator

    • Aim to scale pledge along with delegation to keep pledge leverage below 100 as long as possible. (E.g. 30K Pledge supporting up to 3M delegation and so on).

    • Dedicated nodes running across Intel NUC 11 and 12 series hardware

    • To give something back, in the form of infrastructure for the protocol and education for the community as well as those yet to join the space

    • To try and provide educational resources for the average everyday person

    • Hephaestus - God of fire, metalworking, stone masonry, forges, the art of sculpture, technology and blacksmiths

    • In keeping with other classic mythological names throughout the development of Cardano such as Daedalus, Icarus and Ouroboros.

    • Actually has a historic place in the history of Cardano. When development was originally divided into the Computational Layer and the Settlement Layer between IOHK and Serokell, Serokell had planned to launch their own Hephaestus stake pool in 2018, after their contract had ended but before the release of Shelley was pushed back and Cardano underwent the Byron Reboot - the complete replacement of the underlying codebase of Cardano between 2018-2020.

    • I am a bit of a gaming nerd and so inspiration also came from the fantastic Horizon: Zero Dawn where Hephaestus is the protocol responsible for running the forges and creating the machines that inhabit the world. Much like Stake Pools are the forges that create blocks on the Cardano blockchain.

Hephaestus Stake Pool [HEPHY]

  • Ticker: HEPHY

  • Pool ID: f4ebee070198a0db41e46d5e59a7c582357013d15b907f65ad75d55e

  • Single Stake Pool

  • Cardano Single Pool Alliance (CSPA) and Extra Small Pool Alliance (xSPO) member

  • BP - Intel NUC11TNKi3, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD

  • Relay - Intel NUC11TNKi7, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD

  • Relay 2 - Intel NUC12WSKi5, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD

  • Remotely managed via Twingate and secured with 2FA

  • UPS backups to network devices and node hardware

  • Pledge secured via hardware wallet

  • Live slot height reporting to PoolTool.io

  • Additional support: Mithril Signer, Blockfrost Icebreaker

Delegate to community pools, help decentralisation and earn rewards for participation

Average Return on ADA 2-3.5% per year

Staking

Staking can be viewed as a partnership between delegator and operator. While a delegator may lack the technical skills, time, or ADA to run their own pool, an operator may lack the amount of ADA required to produce blocks on their own. Therefore it can be considered as a pooling of resources towards a common goal.

Voting

Project Catalyst is a decentralised innovation fund on Cardano. Projects wishing to build on Cardano can apply for funding during a funding round and ADA holders can vote on which projects they think should receive funding. As of February 2025 there have been 13 completed funding rounds since December 2020.

Governance and CIP-1694

CIP-1694 is the Cardano Improvement Proposal for the future governance of Cardano. In order to develop the systems that will be needed for on-chain governance there is a testnet dedicated solely to this purpose and it is called “SanchoNet”. Visit the website for a Get Started guide and to learn about Stake Pool Operators (SPOs), Delegated Representatives (DReps) and the Constitutional Committee (CC) and the roles they will play in shaping the future of Cardano throughout 2024 and beyond.

Wallets

  • Daedalus - full-node, desktop-only wallet from Input Output Global

  • Lace - light-wallet from Input Output (April 2023). Currently available as a browser extension wallet.

  • Yoroi - mobile and browser-extension wallet from Emurgo

  • Vespr - mobile and desktop extension wallet

  • Eternl - mobile, browser and browser extension wallet

  • Typhon - browser and browser extension wallet

  • Begin - mobile and browser extension wallet from B58 Finance

  • Gero - browser extension wallet

Pool Info

Pool ID: f4ebee070198a0db41e46d5e59a7c582357013d15b907f65ad75d55e

pool17n47upcpnzsdks0yd409nf79sg6hqy73twg87eddwh24uj745rt

Explorers