January 11, 2022, was the official launch of Moonbeam as one of the very first parachains on Polkadot. It was preceded by the successful launch of Moonriver, a parachain on Kusama, around six months earlier. There were incredibly high hopes. The decentralized blockchain industry was at the peak of its rebound from the last bear market. Polkadot was in pole position to challenge incumbents like Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. An expansion was happening, and Moonbeam’s leadership had a solid vision of creating interconnected chains and enabling a transparent user experience for everyone around the world. Little did we know what was in store. SBF, the Nomad hack, Three Arrows, and more.
Moonbeam truly had success early on and in context of the Polkadot ecosystem, till the end. At its peak, the market cap reached over $1 billion. Around March 2022, during the early success, it attracted people and organizations who previously were not paying attention. A note is needed here. At that time, CertHum and a couple dozen small, independent tech enthusiasts were working on our own as independent collators, which needs some explanation.
Moonbeam, built on Substrate as a parachain, had a fixed limit on how many collators, (similar to validators), can participate in consensus. The set is stack-ranked based on total stake, and if a to-be collator is below the threshold, they are out. As an example, if 64 collators are authorized by the chain, collator 65 will not participate or earn rewards if it has less stake than 64.
When Moonbeam got a lot of attention, large investors would jump into the active collator set and buy enough tokens so that they were not 65th or whatever. If they were ever at risk of dropping out due to new stake to other collators, they would just top up their stake and forget about it.
This effectively put indie collators in a survival situation. We could not drop $1 million to buy tokens to self-stake to maintain a position in the top 64. We were constantly trying to get new delegations, and figure out ways to add value so that network participants wanted us to stay in the set.
One enterprising indie collator from TrueStake decided to create a group where indie collators could work together to save ourselves. If we could attract community delegations, eventually it would become too expensive and burdensome for the big teams to keep self-delegating. We could also coordinate our spare tokens to save members of the group from falling past the threshold to participate in consensus.
His idea worked, but was limited. By forming that group, we realized we had some power to help slow what was happening, the continuing loss of indie collators. But the group had a problem. There were those in it who would not throw their spare GLMR in to help other members in need. They used it to plot their own survival, even if it worked against other members of the group. This was not sustainable.
So a new group was formed, spearheaded by me, called the Collator Delegation Fund (CDF). It had the same ethos, join small indie operators together to help each other, but with rules. A team joining had to contribute to be a member. They had to delegate to other members on the verge of falling out of the active set, or risk not receiving delegation in return. We created a community reserve fund that at one point had almost 1M GLMR. We saved so many member collators but at the same time, unbeknownst to us, formed bonds that were unexpected.
Many of us stayed up all hours of the night during the early days (like when Bitcoin Suisse and Simply Staking dropped in 8 nodes over a 2 month period), messaging across time zones around the world. We supported each other, and watched each other’s backs. But the help extended outside of Moonbeam. One member helped me get a job, and I still consider them a friend that will last my lifetime (but this is true for every member). Another bought me beers in Spain and we discussed regional politics. Someone I’ve grown incredibly close with teaches me about Italian food and we share pictures of our loved ones. I can’t put a price on that. This is friendship that was born out of Moonbeam.
I’ve been enlightened by discussions with almost every community member where we talked politics, religion, technology, and everything in between, opening my mind to ideas I never would have had on my own. All of this would not have happened without Moonbeam and I am grateful for that.
Without Moonbeam, these relationships would never have been formed. I have met many community members in person, and still plan to meet others when the time is right, the shared thread that we wanted and worked to bring out the best of Moonbeam. But in business, we know, things don’t always work out. But, the death of one idea is not a burial. It is a springboard to multitudes more. And I already see that happening now.
To all the indie collators and the friends and people I have met through this wild, ambitious project – it was not in vain.
And to the delegators who were truly the backbone of all of this, I am deeply grateful. In many ways, the delegators were better than all of us building on the infrastructure. They saw a vision of a new financial world and bought into it with conviction. I will always consider you friends, and I carry immense appreciation to all of you for our shared belief.
All of this was just the start.
Some socials if anyone wants to stay in touch: