ADA is the token for the Cardano network. Cardano is a third generation, decentralized proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. Cardano was started in 2015 by one of the co-founders of Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson. Cardano and it's ADA token were launched in 2017. Cardano has gone through multiple development "eras". Each era goes through peer reviewed academic research, prototyping, and development.
Proof-of-stake is a type of consensus mechanism used by some cryptocurrency blockchain networks. Cardano uses Block Producers (part of a "Stake Pool") to create new transaction blocks and validate transactions via the Ourboros protocol. Holders of ADA can help secure the network by delegating their ADA to a Stake Pool (like our 4WARD pool). In return, holders are rewarded with ADA when the Stake Pool generates new blocks.
You will need to buy some ADA on an exchange first. After your deposit clears, you will be able to send your ADA to a wallet like Eternl or Nami. Within Eternl and other ADA wallets, you can choose a pool and delegate to it. The entire process generally takes 5 to 10 days depending on the exchange you choose. When you delegate your ADA, there is no lock period and you never give anyone else control over your ADA. You always maintain the "keys".
If you are ready to delegate, visit us on Cexplorer.io!
Cardano uses Epochs to define a period of time that a set of randomly selected pools will be active. The random selection is weighted with a number of parameters, one being the total delegation to the pool. The more delegation a pool has, the higher chance it has to be active for a given epoch. When your delegated pool is selected to be active and it creates blocks during that epoch, you will get rewards from that epoch in 2 epochs time.
The timeline looks like this:
There are a number of amazing veteran charities. They help veterans and their families with financial issues; physical, emotional, and psychological issues; housing; education; and many other things that many of us take for granted.
The Third Option Foundation specifically supports the operators (and their families) of the CIA Special Activities Center. These operators put themselves in the most dangerous situations in the world, usually behind enemy lines. Their work is covert, leaving them with not much more community support than their families. Also, because of their covert nature, they often aren't eligible for support from military veteran charities.
The Third Option Foundation is the only organization that fills that gap. They provide crucial survivorship assistance and resiliency programs to heal the wounded, help the families of those we have lost, and support those who are still serving.
About a year ago, I met Billy Jensen and Check Freedman, the founders of Captive Audience, at Kore Krav Maga in Ashburn, VA. They created Captive Audience to provide security, travel, self-defense, firearms, and survival courses designed to develop the skills needed to maintain situational awareness and survive in kidnapping, extortion, active shooter, natural disaster, and crisis situations at home and abroad.
Requests for their services have spiked since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. In response to these requests, Captive Audience has started #OperationCaffeinatedVikings.
To quote their website:
"The Russian invasion into Ukraine has seen countless lives turned upside down
overnight, with attacks on evacuating civilians and reports of vital lifelines to refugees,
families, and children cut off. In the past two weeks, the Captive Audience team has received
requests from Ukrainians to evacuate a 2-week-old starving baby who was without food or water for
30
hours. Another request came to help excavate 200 Christians trapped in the basement of a burning
church, after a rocket demolished the church building above them. These are just two examples of many amidst the worst humanitarian crisis Europe has
seen since World War II. The scale of the Ukrainian crisis can be overwhelming, and it’s hard to
know how to help. Captive Audience is an organization with deep ancestral ties to Ukraine and has
worked closely with towns, churches, synagogues, UN/EU missions, missionaries, orphanages, and
other
community groups to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine and other parts of the region since 2009.
We have been directly requested by several of those same communities to provide
boots-on-the-ground emergency aid and training in emergency response skills. But we need your help
to get there. By supporting Captive Audience, you’re offering tangible assistance to equip
Ukrainians on the ground."
Our pool operator, Steve Fisher, met 500 Rising's founder, Dr. Tammy McCracken, through her Krav Maga training center, Kore Krav Maga in Ashburn, VA. His personal life experience pushed him to getting involved with her non-profit, 500 Rising. He's since gone on to become a licensed instructor through 500 Rising for "Instructional Foundations in Women's Self-Defense".
500 Rising's first mission is to train female instructors in essential self-defense (however, they do invite and encourage men to get involved). They support these women as they reach out to their communities and networks to make a difference in the stubborn statistics of violence against women.
To quote their website:
Sexual violence, in whatever form, is rarely about lust and sexual pleasure for the
sake of enjoyment. It is about power and control. Power is a primitive drive in humans as without
personal authority, we do not survive to adulthood. This is critical. Believing power is a zero sum game is actively paying homage to a
myth. Changing the statistics in violence against women, and quite possibly violence in general,
is understanding this crosscultural, deeply held myth is just that. A myth. Power is not a zero sum game. If you act as an agent of personal authority, it does
nothing to detract from my personal authority unless I choose to allow it.
The ADA for Warriors pool currently has a minimum fee of 340 ADA and a 0% variable fee. When our pool is active, the income for the pool will be 340 ADA for the epoch (the remaining ADA will get distributed to all of the delegators based on their delegation percentage vs the total delegation).
To reduce the amount of fees paid, donations will typically be made during the last epoch of each month.