Introducing: cardinate.io - providing fast, reliable, and real independent API and node services for the Astar & Shiden network

We would like to introduce ourselves as a provider for fast, reliable, and real independent API and node services for the Astar & Shiden network.

About Us
We have been in IT since 2001, starting in the Web 1.0 world and compiling Linux systems ourself (Kernel 2.2), quickly realizing that IT and network infrastructure is our strength.

Already in 2004 we have been operating our own linux routers, switches and LAMP servers in data centers.

Since 2015 we operate our own autonomous system (AS) and geo-redundant data center infrastructure in the center of Europe and can provide fast reliable services that are completely independent.

So we really support the decentralized approach of the Astar & Shiden network, because our operations, IP connectivity and server systems are definitely not depending on one of the major centralized cloud providers, like AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, OVHcloud, Hetzner, etc.

Our Infrastructure
We only rent the footprint in the data centers, with a maximum of the empty racks, everything else is our own hardware, starting with the routers, switches, servers and storage systems, up to the backbone connections (dark fiber) and transponder systems (DWDM), for the self-sufficient networking of our data center locations.

However, since we have been in this business for a very long time, we know that individual components and services can fail at any time, even basic functions such as power supply and air conditioning can fail, which is why we operate our Core infrastructure exclusively in Tier certified data centers with redundant USV protected power supply and N+1 air conditioning systems.
Our Core components like routers, firewalls, switches, server- and storage-systems are fully redundant too.

We also have our own IPv4- and IPv6-address ranges, which we announce via BGP internet protocol to ensure geo-redundant connectivity of the systems we operate.

We operate our own cloud infrastructure with the following advantages:

  • Autonomous System (AS) and IP address ranges (RIPE NCC member)
  • full mesh BGP Core routers with DoS/DDoS traffic mitigation solution
  • high performance JUNIPER MX routing- and QFX switching infrastructure
  • high performance FUJITSU compute- and NetApp storage systems for nodes and API services
  • high performance FUJITSU and SUPERMICRO bare-metal servers for validators and collators
  • backup and disaster recovery solutions & systems
  • Ansible deployment and automation
  • geo-redundant infastructure, distributed across several data centers in Europe (Germany)
  • 24x7 infrastructure monitoring with Checkmk, Prometheus and Grafana

Basically, we are a provider of the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 world in which we grew up and now see the potential in the emerging Web 3.0 world, which we want to actively support with our knowledge and experience.

Projects
Since the beginning (December 2020) we operate our own validators in the Ethereum 2.0 network.

The future is multi-chain and flexibility, interoperability, scalability are crucial functions.

For this reason, we focus on the Kusama / Polkadot ecosystem and support the following Parachain projects with our services.

Polkadot/Kusama ecosystem projects we already involved in:

  • Kusama / Polkadot network (Nodes)
  • Khala / Phala network (API, Collator, Nodes, Bridges, Workers)
  • Shiden / Astar network (Collator, Nodes)
  • KILT network (Collator, Nodes)
  • Bit.Country / Metaverse.Network (Collator, Nodes)
  • Altair / Centrifuge (API, Nodes)
  • Kintsugi / Interlay (Nodes)
  • Basilisk / HydraDX (Nodes)

Best regards
cardinate

Website:
Link: https://www.cardinate.io

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