Marinade's Solana Validator Spotlight: CogentCrypto
Validators are the hidden stars of the Solana Blockchain. Together they make up a growing network of 1,500-plus nodes around the world that validate block after block and ensure the security and censorship resistance of over 60,000 transactions per second.
Marinade’s Solana Validator Spotlight series continues with Cogent Crypto.
Validators are the hidden stars of the Solana Blockchain. Together they make up a growing network of 1,500-plus nodes around the world that validate block after block and ensure the security and censorship resistance of over 60,000 transactions per second.
That isn’t to say validators work in the shadows.
If, during your crypto research, you’ve ever stumbled upon a reddit post or Discord channel regarding validators on Solana, or surfed Medium for DeFi Strategies, there is a PFP that may look familiar: Cogent Crypto. In less than a year of involvement in Solana, Cogent, known IRL as Ben Hawkins, has provided insight on everything from starting up your own validator to DeFi strategies to collaboration on DAO governance including plenty of contributions to the Marinade community.
It is curious and forthcoming souls like Hawkins that help not only support decentralization through the repetitive validation of blocks, but also help demystify crypto through their own learnings and empower the everyday users of Solana.
From discovering Solana to spinning up a validator
Cogent is a word defined as clear, logical and convincing. Maybe it should include shipper. It’s remarkable to see just how much Hawkins has learned and achieved in less than a year of participation in crypto.
“Tinkering is nice,” said Hawkins. “But the value is in shipping.”
Prior to entering crypto, Hawkins was an entrepreneur who ran a couple companies: an apartment search website that he created and sold and another company selling sewing kits and supplies on Amazon which at its height was shipping $100,000. But as his company grew, in typical “Web 2” fashion, Amazon took notice and used its might to cut into his business.
Hawkins and his wife were driven by the F.I.R.E. (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement and through a combination of savvy investing and hard work achieved their initial savings target. They took a step back from the business grind, but after a few years, Hawkins was in Hawaii on vacation and beginning to itch for his next entrepreneurial move. In discussions with friends about crypto, he began analyzing various blockchains and putting some time and money into researching the ecosystems and protocols on them. He went deep down all the largest Layer-1 chain DeFi rabbit holes and tried out all the protocols he could get his hands on. He found through his own use he was a particular enjoyooor of the dApps on Solana.
In fact, he’s so high on Solana DeFi using Marinade’s stake rewards-bearing mSOL he wrote a guide on it. On the Cogent website he built a Solend APY calculator. He has a favorite mSOL-Solend strategy that involves borrowing and lending stake rewards-bearing mSOL over and over in a strategy he calls “looping.”
But it wasn’t long until Hawkins began going deeper than the common Solana DeFi user and took interest in the validator role of Solana’s Proof-of-History concept and began researching the process. He credits fellow Solana validator Laine for providing great starting tips, as well as Zantetsu from Shinobi Systems. He participated in the Solana Foundation’s server program to get started. Within just 5 days, the Cogent Crypto 0% Commission validator was up and running with SOL staked.
Attracting stake pool SOL was a key part of the initial strategy. Hawkins surveyed Marinade’s docs, the source code and studied their staking bot. He saw Marinade’s decentralization emphasis and selected his location accordingly.
“I turned down better offers from server providers to make sure I had one of the least centralized server locations,” said Hawkins. “Marinade’s algorithm takes that into account.”
By his 5th epoch as a validator, Cogent Crypto had officially attracted SOL from the Marinade stake pool.
Cogent achieved another milestone recently: earning the top spot on the Stakeview app, with the highest current APYs among Solana Validators. Cogent also holds the top spot currently on Stakewiz, whose Wiz Score factors in a dozen metrics to compute a score that rewards good validator behavior and decentralization.
According to Solana Beach, Cogent Crypto now has over 230,000 SOL staked. Still, it is nowhere close to a spot in the Solana “Superminority” — currently the 21 largest Solana validators by stake who, working together, could theoretically halt the network. Over 3.4 million SOL staked is required to rank among these Top 21. Cogent Crypto currently has the 135th largest validator on Solana (.06% of all SOL staked)
To date, Cogent Crypto has suffered no more than one hour of downtime. Hawkins credits setting up the validator correctly from the beginning and installing all the necessary alerts, monitoring stake, storage space and memory alerts.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Hawkins’ technical background helped optimize Cogent Crypto from the start. But it’s his emphasis on community that has helped him attract over 230,000 SOL — quite a feat for an independent validator. Hawkins is active in Discord (his own and Marinade’s), often answering staking questions on Reddit or Twitter and writes longer-form content and tips on Medium. As Marinade DAO debates the next steps for MNDE utility and how to continue creating a prosperous and competitive environment for validators, Hawkins has been highly involved.
“I was readily inspired by Marinade and the way the community is built and how important it is,” said Hawkins. “A flywheel where people help each other out and take advantage of the network effects is a long-term, winning strategy.”
Cogent Cogs: Utility, Community and art unite
When Marinade minted its limited edition NFT chefs for on-chain governance at the beginning of April, Discord’s #Chef-NFT-Flex channel was abuzz with squid-sharing. One mint may have stood out the most: Hawkins’ Level 5 NFT Octopus Chef, equipped with rare traits like a yellow background, and earned the nickname “Fat Ferdinand.”
Fat Ferdinand: Large and in charge.
While DeFi may have lured Hawkins to crypto, the emerging NFT space and limitless opportunities for utility has enabled him to get back to his artistic side, too. He created 1500 Cogent Cog NFTs using a text-to-image neural network architecture called VQGAN+CLIP. The idea is that NFT holders will receive a share in Cogent Crypto revenues.
The public mint for the Cogent Cogs is scheduled to take place on April 30.
Back in 2012, machine Learning technology was the first big investment that Hawkins made. Fast forward to 2022, he’s found a way to couple his expertise in Artificial Intelligence with the possibilities of Solana using these AI-generative NFTs. As a high school student, Hawkins was an avid painter. The cog NFTs also enabled him to revisit his artistic side after an adulthood largely committed to the technical.
Suffice to say Hawkins has found home on Solana.
“I like that it’s a small team moving carefully on many different problems,” said Hawkins. They can switch quickly to what’s most important. Writing software takes time.”
“I’m more bullish on Solana now than when I started.”
About Marinade
Marinade.Finance is the first non-custodial liquid staking protocol built on Solana. Stake your SOL tokens with Marinade and receive mSOL (“marinated SOL”) tokens in return that can be used in decentralized finance (DeFi). mSOL is the most widely integrated collateralized version of SOL. The price of mSOL goes up relative to SOL each epoch, with rewards being accrued into your stake account.
Marinade’s delegation strategy stakes to 400+ validators that are selected automatically by an open-source, fair formula based on performance, commission, and decentralization.
