Happy Birthday, Everstake!

It is five years today since Everstake received its first stake, so we consider it our real birthday. Hurray! 🎉

Many things have happened since then, both in Everstake and the world. Cryptowinters, a pandemic, and the war in Ukraine were all a troubling background for the progress and development of our company. There were many things that went wrong, things that could have gone better, and, of course, there were things that we remain proud of to this very day.

A birthday is supposed to be a happy occasion, after all. So today, let’s recall something that brings smiles to our faces. Something we think is funny. Something we think is cool. Something we feel happy about.

Our Growth. Obviously

Everstake began as a small startup of just 6 people, initially validating just for EOS. In five years, we’ve grown to employ 120+ people in different departments and validate for 70 different blockchains. Some even suggest that Everstake has the biggest number of delegators among all other professional validators.

If we’re honest, we can neither confirm nor deny it, but we do handle stakes from over 625,000 people, which marks the most important achievement to us: community trust.

Helping Ukraine

As a Ukrainian company, Everstake was affected by the russian invasion, but thanks to the timely relocation of infrastructure and employees even before the outbreak of the war, we managed to maintain our business and uphold a nearly 100% uptime. That is indeed something we can pride ourselves on.

Then we moved on to help Ukraine win the existential struggle.

Thus, we’ve raised over $60 million in crypto for Aid For Ukraine in cooperation with our friends and supporters, including the ICON community ($1 million), Hedera ($1 million), Vitalik Buterin (750 ETH or over $2.4 million at the time), Justin Sun ($200,000), Digital Bits ($300,000), and Gavin Wood ($5 million) among others.

1/4 During our panel discussion at the Harvard Club of NYC, the Managing Editor at @CoinDesk @realDannyNelson asked @SolanaFndn‘s Head of Communications @Austin_Federa how successful was @_AidForUkraine as a DAO to help 🇺🇦. Here is what Austin said. Spoiler: VERY SUCCESSFUL. pic.twitter.com/83NQTjWYQS

— Everstake (@everstake_pool) September 30, 2022

Crypto winters

Everstake was founded in 2018 and thus survived the crypto winter of 2018-2020 as well as the ongoing recession. Even though none of them was a happy occasion, we believe crypto winters are an inevitable part of crypto’s maturing into a full-fledged and healthy industry lacking random fortune seekers and hype enthusiasts. Soldiering on through the hard times is what makes any company stronger.

Investing in Real Opportunities

Everstake’s investment branch, called Everstake Capital, has every reason to be proud of its work. In coordination with our R&D department, they hand-pick up-and-coming blockchains and invest in their development at early stages. And it looks like the selection process is indeed very rigorous since 90% of all investments by Everstake Capital become profitable, as exemplified by Solana, Wormhole, Metaplex, and Pyth, among others. Keep up the good work!

The Famous Beer Drama

Now, this is funny. Last year, Everstake wanted to hold a beer party in Lisbon and ordered a big batch. Still, due to logistic trouble associated with the war, it soon became clear that the beer had zero chance of leaving Ukraine in time for the party, and it was a big problem. Of course, there was beer in Lisbon, but we were adamant about treating our guests to a Ukrainian product, and finding one in Lisbon… turned out pretty easy.

So, not only were we able to procure a local Ukrainian craft beer, but we also found a producer/supplier of traditional Ukrainian nastoyankas, which our guests seemed to have enjoyed greatly.

1/6 It could be sad news, but we’ve discovered a massive silver lining. The thing is that the war made it impossible to deliver our Everbeer in time for our party at #Breakpoint. But Ukrainians don’t give up. So you’ll still get to enjoy authentic Ukrainian drinks when you come. pic.twitter.com/jsgCBuOsGn

— Everstake (@everstake_pool) November 3, 2022

Inconclusive

Of course, there were other ups and downs in Everstake’s history, but it’s still not completely written. We’re working on infrastructural projects, such as extrnode, which is focused on protecting the RPC layer from censorship while accelerating its operation, and other things we cannot reveal so far.

1/8 As our public load balancer for @solana has processed nearly 950M requests, we believe it’s time to fully explain how it works and, more importantly, our vision for its future. Keep reading the thread or watch a full video for more details on that:

👾 https://t.co/LKozxQc212 pic.twitter.com/sRn2gY80sb

— extrnode | Powered by Everstake (@extrnode) March 9, 2023

But we’re confident that in five years’ time, we’ll be able to put out an even bigger list of things we can take sincere pride in. Stay tuned!