Announcement: First Block Reward and Charitable Donation

8SQRD Milestone: First Cardano (ADA) Block Reward 

We are excited to announce that 8SQRD Cardano Stake Pool has minted its first block reward as of Epoch 269. This is a monumental milestone for our mission-driven stake pool and community. We truly appreciate our loyal ADA delegators supporting our mission-driven stake pool and we wish to send our deepest gratitude.

Epoch 269 Rewards Breakdown:

Pool Operator Rewards	Delegator Rewards
427.1	391.1

We also want to share an update on our first charitable contributions to organizations that fight anti-Asian racism. You’ll find more information on our efforts for transparency, our upcoming charitable, mission-driven plan, and our commitment to increase our community visibility.

Charitable Donation to Stop AAPI Hate and Stop Asian Hate Canada

8SQRD is a mission-driven stake pool with purpose to give back. As shared on our Mission page and recent blog post, we endeavoured to support non-profit, charitable, and non-governmental organizations using pool-owner rewards from our Stake Pool. 8SQRD set its mission to support the elimination of Asian hate by making a charitable donation to fight anti-Asian racism.

We announced to our Cardano community at the very beginning that we planned to donate US$100 (converted from ADA rewards) after we minted our first block reward. This donation was to be made out to Stop AAPI Hate – one of the largest, recognized organizations fighting anti-Asian racism. We made our donation as promised but decided to up the ante with an additional C$100 donation to Stop Asian Hate Canada! Together, we lived up to our word and donated about C$225 to two upstanding organizations that fight anti-Asian racism. 

Donation Transparency

We created The Good Initiatives Fund (TGIF) to allocate a pool of funds generated from 8SQRD Cardano Stake Pool rewards to support good causes. A transparent ADA wallet address for TGIF had been created for full transparency of when funds moved in and out. This helps us clearly separate funds for our pool operations versus funds to support nonprofit and charitable causes. For our first block reward, we decided to do a 50-50 split between our operations funds and TGIF (213.6 ADA for each). Donation receipts were initially paid in fiat by our Stake Pool Operators to the respective organizations and later reimbursed from TGIF wallet address.

We share the information below for transparency to the Cardano community. We also want to use it to show our commitment to fight anti-Asian racism using our mission-driven stake pool rewards.

TGIF – ADA Wallet Address:

addr1q8j8azwfkavp74gh39m8qy8zv8cpjfz7fsfkq6e5zpdzsejqavnsc4dvuxgzcchma4xcedyap22wkdj37f2vl3ehsgeqs6c44s

Charitable Donation Receipts:

• Stop AAPI Hate (US$100)
• Stop Asian Hate Canada (CA$100)

 

Next Steps for Charitable Mission

What’s the next step for 8SQRD’s Cardano Stake Pool’s charitable mission?

As 8SQRD Cardano Stake Pool continues to grow and mint new block rewards, we’ll continue to adapt our charitable donation game plan to balance sustainability and longevity with charitable giving. While we’re already set to mint our second block for Epoch 271, we will pause and reflect to plan out our next charitable steps. We hope to share our our 2021/2022 charitable plan which will outline donation recipients, amounts and schedule in the coming months. You can trust that 8SQRD Cardano Stake Pool will continue to be a mission-driven Stake Pool that will make regular donation contributions to initiatives we support. Be sure to check out our community channels on Discord and Twitter, as well as, updates on website blog posts for more on our future plans. 

8SQRD Stake Pool Growth: New Delegators

We minted our first block and we made our first donation. However, we can’t stop here. While, we are proud of our existing delegators that helped us reach our first block reward milestone, we know we need to continue to grow our pool of delegators and stake to achieve maximum success. 8SQRD Cardano Stake Pool will continue to grow our presence in the Cardano community to increase visibility for new delegators. In the next few months, we’ll have a lot more activities to ensure that this is possible, including meet ups, treasure hunts, and creating partnerships.

In the mean time, for Cardano newcomers and delegators, we welcome you with open arms. We hope that the Cardano community sees the value in mission-driven stake pool’s fight against anti-Asian racism and worthy of your delegation. If you need help delegating, we’re here to help. Check out our how-to post on delegation, but feel free to make a personal connection with us by connecting on our community channels. 

Stake with us to make a difference against anti-Asian racism.