This is the fourth installment of Spotlight Quest, Polygon PoS Validators, a new series featuring interviews with Polygon PoS validators. Learn what it takes to be a validator, deep-dive into coordination, and better get to know Polygon PoS. Then, for every interview, find the secret passphrase to unlock a mintable NFT on Galxe, with 1000 available to mint for each spotlight. 

The first three traits have already been unlocked. As you read through the interview with Kiln x Ownest, keep your eye out for a secret password that will make you eligible to mint the next trait: Alchemist. Then head over to the Galxe campaign and mint today!

In 2023, Kiln and Ownest, two France-based companies, joined forces to act as a single validator, Kiln X Ownest, for the Polygon Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. 

Bringing together significant validation knowledge, their collaboration has made for a better staking experience not just for institutional players, but also anyone interested in participating in network security as a delegator. 

In this Q&A, we speak to Kiln and Ownest about each company’s history validating for Polygon PoS, their setups and security, and what it means to be involved in decentralized governance. 

On their companies’ mission

Kiln: Kiln is a leading enterprise-grade staking platform, enabling institutional customers to stake assets and whitelabel staking functionality into their offering. Kiln operates validators on multiple major PoS blockchains, with over $3 billion in crypto assets programmatically staked, including running over 3% of the Ethereum network on a multi-cloud, multi-region infrastructure. Additionally, Kiln provides a validator-agnostic suite of products for fully automated deployment of validators, and reporting and fee management, enabling custodians, wallets, and exchanges to streamline staking operations across providers. Kiln is SOC2 Type 2 certified.

Ownest: Founded in 2017, Ownest provides a solution based on Polygon PoS that leverages NFTs to track products from B2B supply chains to C2C secondary markets, enhancing traceability and reducing losses. As a Polygon network supporter, Ownest started as a validator in 2020 and recently introduced PolStaking, a platform aiming to serve as an explorer and community hub for staking within the growing Polygon ecosystem.

On their experience as a Polygon PoS validator

Our experience as a Polygon PoS validator has been truly great. Every step of the way, we've received remarkable support from the wider community whenever we've needed assistance. The staking ecosystem's innovations have kept us engaged and inspired. We're particularly excited about solutions like Fastlane, which we've now integrated into our validator operations.

A standout aspect of our experience has been the deeply ingrained collaborative spirit of the Polygon community. The forum for validators and governance is an active and robust discussion involving all participants – from the validator community to the developers and users – working together to consistently enhance and fortify the safety and functionality of the Polygon PoS network.

We try to be as active as possible in Polygon PoS governance, participating in most meetings and discussions on the Polygon community forum. Although we haven't yet written any Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs), it is something we would like to do in the future.

For us, Polygon ecosystem governance is still being built and is something that the whole community - and not simply the validators - will help shape.

Good job! You found this week’s pa-ss wo-rd: collaboration. 

On their security practices

We leverage Kubernetes to be able to easily switch validator hardware, and are integrated with several cloud providers.

Signer validation keys are stored on Hashicorp and loaded in-memory only on the validation pods. Validator does not sync publicly but relies on sentries instead.

We run 24/7 on-call rotation modeled on the Google SRE practices You can read about Kiln’s on-call and incident response policy here. 

On their upcoming projects

Kiln: We continue to develop the Kiln Connect API, which enables granular, realtime, and network-wide reporting on staking data for institutions and ETP providers–and are just weeks away from offering support for Polygon PoS. In addition, we are developing Kiln Dashboard integrations with leading custodians.

Ownest: We're happy to introduce PolStaking, a dedicated platform and community focused on staking within the Polygon ecosystem. This platform aims to gather staking information for upcoming various chains within the Polygon ecosystem, starting with Polygon PoS. The PolStaking dashboard providers insights to delegators about their staking activities, with a simple wallet connection. Additionally, we are launching Polstaking Artifacts & Creatures, a series of unique NFTs that amplify the benefits of staking.

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Tune into the blog and our social channels to keep up with updates about the Polygon ecosystem.

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