Hello EOS community,

We are Crypto Lions, and we are candidates for EOS Block Producer.

In our estimation, EOS is a masterpiece of incentive structuring. It is inspiring and humbling to see so many great, talented people working make EOS not just a success, but a revolution. We're proud to be a part of it.

We're fans of Dan Larimer's human-first approach, which acknowledges the fallibility of code and stands in stark contrast to the rest of the crypto space. This seems to us like a better interpretation of property rights than the prevalent "the code is the law" attitude. We support the primacy of arbitrage, and understand the burden this puts on BPs. We will pay the opportunity cost associated with extreme transparency and complete integrity.

Updates will be posted here on Steemit.

1) Public website URL and at least one social media account:

http://cryptolions.io/
https://steemit.com/@cryptolions
https://t.me/block_producer_candidate
https://github.com/CryptoLions

(See also, Linkedin profiles below)

Addendum: Separate Telegram chat for our Jungle testnet: https://t.me/jungletestnet

2) Links to the following ID information, all posted to the Steem blockchain (either in one post or multiple):

A) Official block producer candidate name.

Crypto Lions

(Name of legal entity will be published upon creation.)

B) Location of company headquarters.

Ukraine (Kyiv & Lviv)

C) Expected location of servers.

Primary node: Tier 3 datacenter in Germany

Backup node: Ukraine

D) Type of servers (cloud, bare metal, etc).

We are now actively experimenting with EOS. We want to see some load testing before making a final decision.

Our tentative plan:

Both the primary and backup nodes will run from Virtualized Environments (VEs) built atop our own dedicated servers.

The primary node's VE will run from three servers located in a tier 3 data center in Germany. The backup node's VE will run from two servers located in Ukraine.

Cons: VEs are a small compromise of the performance potential of the raw hardware on which they're built. They also make scaling more labor intensive as compared to something like AWS.

Pros: VEs allow dynamic scaling of resources. They're resilient against hardware failure, and most importantly, they protect the EOS eco system against cloud centralization.

We have not yet made decisions about hardware capacity, including RAM, Storage, CPU specifications, and bandwidth.

Again, these are tentative plans. We will announce our final hardware specifications, including RAM, Storage, CPU specifications, and connectivity in the first week of May.

security measures

We are ready to implement various security measures including hiding our BP node, or open firewall ports only to other BPs. However such measures raise questions to the broader community. For example, we don't want to exclude new BPs from completing on a level playing field.

We're waiting for guidance and community discussion. If anybody knows of any which we missed, please let us know by commenting below.

E) Current employee list and pictures of at least 67% of staff. & F) Relevant background qualifications for at least 67% of staff.

Bohdan Kossak

Founder, IT, Strategy
Ukraine

• Head of IT, Ericpol (acquired by Ericsson)
• Runner up, All-Ukrainian Olympiad in informatics
• BettingBlocks, Block777, BTC Miner Prediction Lotteries
• Whomined.com, BTC Block Explorer
• geroj.com (> 15 M visitors)
• LTC & BTC Mining Operations

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bohdan-kossak-a25b722/

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Roman Skaskiw

co-Founder, Strategy, Communications
Ukraine - U.S.

• Stanford University Comp Sci
• CTO, Atlantic Group
• Libertarian Author (mises.org, DA)
• Bitcoin vs Gold (2013)
• BettingBlocks, Block777, BTC Miner Prediction Lotteries
• Whomined.com, BTC Block Explorer
• Asset buy-back on btct.co

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roman-skaskiw-300a6671/

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GQ Fu

Advisor, Development
Ukraine - Singapore

• Founder/CEO, Relote
• Customer Success Specialist, GlobalSign.in

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gq-fu/

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Vladimir Izmalkov

IT
Ukraine

• Head of IT, Visiprise (acquired by SAP)
• SAP Lab, Ukraine
• Head of IT, Atlantic Group
• Bitcoin Mining Operations
• Expert in virtualized environments

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirizmalkov/

We're currently recruiting a business advisor, Daap developer (to promote EOS), speaking to legal councils in various jurisdictions, and to data center operations specialists.

Addendum:

Sudip Banerjee

Operations, Business Development
Ukraine - India

• CTO, IT Infrastructure and Corporate surveillance systems, ITX security LLC
• Deployed IT Projects in Ukraine, UAE, Germany
• Sales, Deployment and MRO of Security systems to Banking and Oil Industries
• Paytomat
• Security Audit, Arcelor Mittal
• English/Russian/Ukrainian/Hind-Bangla
• ME Computer Systems and Networks, National Technical University of Ukraine

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudipbanerg/

Clear identity of company and employees is important, according to the majority of BP candidates.

As of this writing, our most likely course of action will be the creation of a Germany company with a Ukrainian subsidiary.

We expect resolution by the end of April.

Initially we considered Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, and Germany. We've narrowed it down to Ukraine and Germany.

With Ukraine, the big concern remains regulatory uncertainty. Existing crypto-related companies in Ukraine operate in a legal gray zone, often classifying themselves as simple IT companies. This gives us a lot less work to do in exchange for uncertainly. There is no transparent method of legitimizing crypto income. According to our contact at the National Bank of Ukraine, even laws currently under consideration by Ukraine's parliament do not seem sufficiently comprehensive to alleviate the uncertainly.

Germany, by contrast, seems to have the best combination of clear, comprehensive laws for crypto-businesses, and a reliable legal tradition. We are willing to pay the extra cost of compliance. Our biggest concern is less jurisdictional diversity, as other BP candidates are located in the EU, though we don't yet know if they'll be operating under German jurisdiction.

As of this writing, our most likely course of action will be the creation of a Germany company with a Ukrainian subsidiary.

We hope to announce the formation of our legal entity by the end of April.

3) Estimate of technical specifications and total expenditure for resources by June 3, 2018 - posted to Steem blockchain.

As discussed in 2D, We will announce our decision by the first week of May, if not sooner.

4) Estimated scaling plan for hardware after June 3, 2018 - posted to Steem blockchain.

2018 plan: Run two virtualized environments (primary and backup) for ease of scaling. Build the relationships needed to purchase, partner with, build from the ground up, a full blown data center.

2019 plan: Migrate to our dedicated data center, while keeping our EU-based servers as backups.

5) Community benefit project outline, only for projects expected to be public by June 3, 2018 - posted to Steem blockchain.

As the eastern-most European BP candidate, we will take the lead in promoting EOS in this part of the world, namely post-Soviet states, and the Black Sea region. This may change if other BPs arrive, but until they do, we plan to promote EOS in these regions.

translation project (Russian) - launching soon

EOS conferences - planning them now

Our long-term plan is to partner with initiatives that support software entrepreneurs, and plug into the emerging parts of the EOS community which are already seeking out and identifying strong project and teams.

We also have a few of our own projects in mind, including one which would incentivize Saas businesses to the EOS eco-system. We're really excited about the potential here. In fact, we've been talking about this since before we decided to launch our BP candidacy.

However (Important note) we do not want to fund our own dApps without community support. Though they would potentially build the EOS eco-system, there's a conflict of interest. For our own projects, we'd like to create some checks and balances from the community at large. In other words, we want to build a system for community approval, assuming there isn't a sufficient one already baked into the version of EOS which will be released on June 1st. (This is one of the reasons we're recruiting an EOS dApp developer.)

6) Listing of Telegram and node names for community testnet participation.

We are "aristotle" on the "scholar" testnet (http://scholar.eosnation.io/) which was put together by the great guys at @EOS-SoCal and @EOSNation. (@xebb's Superhero testnet already has 21 BPs when we contacted him.)

And we have launched our own "jungle" testnet:

https://github.com/CryptoLions/JungleTestnet
http://jungle.cryptolions.io:8888/v1/chain/get_info

But we're debating whether to re-launch it on the version released earlier today, DAWN-2018-03-23.

We see there are many changes, including new daemon names . . . :-)

If any technical partners want to join us, please contact us through our Telegram channel. We're especially interested in some organized load testing so that we have a basis for analyzing required server capacity.

Our Values

Sophrosyne - Inspired by Eos being the ancient Greek goddess of the Dawn, sophrosyne is an ancient Greek concept of an ideal of excellence of character and soundness of mind, which when combined in one well-balanced individual leads to other qualities, such as temperance, moderation, prudence, purity, and self-control.

Respect - To everyone. Always. This begins with respect for the EOS community and its constitution.

Competence - Meeting the technical, organizational, and legal demands of EOS block producers.

Integrity - Being honest with others and with ourselves. Doing what we say we'll do. Erring on the side of openness and honesty, no matter what, even if we're block producer #22 (which is where the prisoners' dilemma occurs).

Tentative Road Map

April 2018
Recruit business advisor, legal council, dAap developer
Load testing on test-net
Begin Russian Language translation project
Conferences in Kyiv and Vinnytsia, Ukraine
Choose jurisdiction and official legal council
Create legal entity

May 2018
Final decision about server specification
Continue Russian Language translation project
Conference in Lviv
Demo simple EOS application
Plan data center creation or partnership
Announce tentative proceed distribution

June 2018
Support EOS as BP
Fund conferences and events all over the Post-Soviet and Black Sea regions
Designate part of our proceeds as reserved for community approval

Q3 Q4 2018
Security & IT Audit (first for ourselves, then for any other BP who wants it)
Expand IT staff
Focus on good EOS governance and informed voting
Continue EOS promotion
Expand translation project into Turkish, possibly Polish, Ukrainian, and Romanian
Community relations rep
Finalize data center plans

2019
Efficiently carry out legal, technical, and governance responsibilities
Refocus on dApp development
Migrate to a dedicated data center

Misc

We are self-funded and we are not whales.

The name "Crypo Lions" has been the name of our informal slack channel for crypto chat for a long time. Our founder, Bohdan, is based in Lviv, which is sometimes called the "City of Lions".

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Thanks for Reading!

🦁🦁🦁