[BIP-10A] RFF and Vote: Fantom Validator Platform

With the overwhelmingly positive response to BIP-10 that is likely to pass, we wanted to give a head start to getting community sentiment for available hosting options.

Evaluation Criteria

In general, Beefy currently has a few requirements when evaluating solutions for any third-party platform or service:

• The ability to remain personally anonymous
• The ability to pay using crypto or prepaid debit card
• Reasonably priced, given the above (since that can be seen as risk)

Platform Options

We've performed fairly extensive research into our options, based on this criteria, and have evaluated a couple of options that work.

For completeness, here are options we've considered, but cannot choose:

• Amazon AWS: Costs are actually very high for the level of resources we would need. They would process pre-paid gift cards, but with the high costs, would exceed any realistic ability to utilize them.

• Microsoft Azure: A relatively solid choice in general, but they require too much individually-identifiable information for signup.

• Hetzner (directly): Offers the best price by far, but also requires too much individually-identifiable information for both signup and payment.

Proposal

We have identified two paths that would fulfill our requirements:

• Vultr Hosting ($350/mo with immediate setup): 4TB NVMe; 8 Core 3.7 GHz CPU; 128 GB RAM; 10 Gbps Network. Allows payment in crypto.

• UltimateNodes (via Hetzner; $120/mo): 4TB NVMe; 12 Core Ryzen 3900 CPU; 128 GB RAM; 1 Gbps Network. Allows payment in crypto. A business run by a long-time member of the Fantom community; this offers the best price and good direct support.

Notes: These configurations are based on what's available at these hosts. Trying to tailor them would actually increase prices.

The choice is being offered because in internal discussions on which direction to take, some preferred the "just another customer" aspect of Vultr, who wouldn't know what we were running. However, since our Validator keystore would be password-protected, neither platform has direct access to the Validator address.

The vote falls to the DAO to help us bring this initiative to the finish line!