= Percentage of Cardano Stake Pools Utilizing Cloud Based Servers vs. Bare Metal Servers =

Is there a way to obtain data on the population of SPOs that use cloud-based vs bare metal servers?
With K increasing, I feel many pools will "duplicate" and run another stake pool on web based services, rather than shell out for the more expensive bare metal servers

And then here's another question: is this cloud based method of running a stake pool a threat to decentralization, in itself? What happens if a bad actor decides to target a server farm housed by Google or Amazon. Whether through hacking or by "drone strike" (or something). Is this a concern?

There is nothing wrong with hosted solutions and not every pool that is hosted is a cloud based solution that is hosted on one of the services mentioned. Vps / cloud servers by nature are not limited to a few geographic locations, run on the same machines, or all owned by the same operation or company. Meaning when 1 goes down they all don't go down

As far as " bare metal server " most of this has been pure marketing and terms been used improperly to push their brand or product

Nothing says that any of the operations that have mentioned these "bare metal servers" that spin up more pools are running them on new "bare metal servers" or even secondary hosts or are anything more than a physical machine likely on a home based internet connection not all but a large subset running multiple pools and relays from the same system. This does nothing for redundancy or decentralization either it's actually worse and far less reliable

As for your last part, highly unlikely an speculative however several operations have made a point to find alternative hosting solutions that are not limited to these cloud services to ensure the network is not just solely ran on those services

The bad part is that its not easily identified or verifiable and many of these operations who running dedicated machines are having a hard time finding support by the community

Just don't be misguided by marketing more often than not the multiple operations or groups of pools are more likely to be on the same system or systems or hosted on central services like you mentioned in your post to maximize their return in the future these will likely be sorted out as load increases and their systems prove unstable


TL;DR If you and others are truly looking to support decentralization look into the smaller operations and single pools or a pair of pools that have pledge but are struggling to gain stake vs the multi pool operations that have several pools above 20m stake on each. These are more likely to be less centralized pools for now

It's not a huge concern

Let's say that a pool had their node compromised. The attacker gains complete access to the server running the node and the pool operator loses complete access

As soon as that happens, the pool operator can just invalidate the old keys, reissue new ones, then have the pool back up and running in less than an hour

Theres a project from one of the community members called Dcloud. Kind of underrated project imo. Check out the project interviews on youtube from : The Cardano Effect Digital Fortress Your Cardano update
httpsyoutu.be/NnZXiwxrwKc
httpsyoutu.be/Ute7wsMh6g8
httpsyoutu.be/Nc1IEVgI5Vo
'cloud based' just means 'someone elses'. it could mean virtual, or it could mean bare-metal

'web based services' - gmail is a web based service. so it my website. so is office365. so is ip.me. what are you trying to say?
threats to decentralisation? what? you're clutching at straws trying to sound important here. stop talking

come back with a coherent question, when you have one

By threat to decentralization, I was inquiring whether hosting a significant portion of the Cardano network on AWS or Google servers poses any threat to decentralization. By this I mean will these server hosting services have any currently unforeseen influence over the network. Can a catastrophic power failure, foreign attack, or bad actor attack have a major negative impact on the Cardano network. With all the servers seemingly in one physical location, is this not at odds with the idea of centralization? Personally I think this is a valid question. And if I am mistaken, I would like to know the specifics about why I am mistaken in thinking there may be problems with this

I don't think you're necessarily doing the ecosystem any favors by criticizing my discussion inquiry, nor do I appreciate the condescension. I am just looking to be educated. If your response is going to be deconstructive to the conversation, please help myself and others by either staying out of the conversation or rephrasing your objections

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