Cardano SPO: Berch Pool [BERCH]

This week’s guest in the Cardano SPO column is a staking and development company whose mission is the decentralization of the Cardano network and cleaning the oceans : Berch_Pool [BERCH] .

Last week’s host was a mission-driven stake pool aiming to fund school education for children in Tanzania .

This initiative is a point of reference for everything related to Cardano and every week or two we will invite a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) to answer a few questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Hi, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Please introduce yourself, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

Thanks for inviting us! You’ve interviewed some great stake pools and we’re happy to be included! There are two partners in Berch Pool. My name is Chris Nekvinda and I have been in the crypto industry since 2016. I have a PhD in educational design and I am a strategy consultant for traditional financial institutions.

Bernie Apshago is the other partner, and is a technology consultant with more than 20 years in the industry. Bernie also runs ADAMinthouse.io ; an NFT market with tools to help artists create their own NFTs … or Cardano NFT (CNFT)

Tell us how you discovered Cardano and the path that led you to become a Stake Pool Operator (SPO)

We have both been interested in cryptocurrencies for some time. I started mining ETH and LTC in 2016 and Bernie has been following the developments in blockchain technology for several years. We both understood the value of Ethereum, but didn’t jump into development due to cost and time. High gas costs and network congestion were a problem. 

I am an academic (Chris) and I was drawn to both the mission and the research-based approach adopted by Cardano. So in January 2021 I consolidated several possessions and joined Cardano. I keep mining ETH but convert it to ADA. Bernie was interested in developing dApps with real world applications… not just DEX and trading cards. We both agreed that Cardano was the platform to build on. So… we got busy with Cardano.

This column has had a lot of mission-driven stake pools, what is your mission and how are you pursuing it?

We have chosen to share our rewards with the companies that clean the oceans and rivers. We donate to the Ocean Cleanup Project which invests time and effort to clean plastic from the large Pacific Ocean garbage patch. Bernie is a freediver and lives on the ocean 3-4 months a year with his family. Chris has been passionate about water issues ever since he learned about the garbage slick a few years ago. Bernie saw it firsthand in the water. 

We agreed that this would be the cause we would donate to and help raise awareness. Water is life and we cannot continue to pollute the oceans with plastic and garbage. We publish the numbers of our donation transactions online. We donate to ADA. We know there is concern that some mission-driven pools are not sharing their rewards. We wanted to be as transparent as possible. That’s why our real identities are on our pool website and the TX numbers are also posted on berchpool.io . We want our delegators to know that they can trust and rely on Berch Pool. 

You recently participated in the Minswap FISO lottery , can you explain what a FISO is and what the Minswap project is bringing to Cardano?

Yes, we applied but we couldn’t win the lottery. We have great respect for the Minswap team for their idea. Rather than raising awareness and capital by keeping ADA rewards and exchanging them for MIN tokens, they have chosen to focus their efforts on several smaller SPOs. Then, as people delegate to these SPOs, they earn Minswap tokens that will likely be used on their DEX. This is their story to tell, but it’s a fair initial offer to raise awareness, distribute their tokens, and support SPOs rather than cornering them.

Their DEX on Cardano will likely use those tokens to facilitate swaps. It’s a great idea and I love how they worked with the SPOs. We qualified but we didn’t pass the selection… but it happens. They have been transparent and fair about this. Can’t wait for their launch! This is how we have interpreted what they are doing.

Thank you very much for the contribution. Any final thoughts? Where can people contact you?

There is a lot of talk about what’s going to happen in technology and the economy. These are some of our respective strengths and we both strongly believe that the future will be tokenized. We spend a lot of time discussing products and building use cases. Our first collaboration was with Akademia Brewing Company of Athens Georgia in the United States. They helped us create a Cardano-inspired Ada4oceans India Pale Lager. We use the Ada4oceans.com site for NFT giveaways. 

The NFTs with the Ada4oceans beer label will go on sale in a week and all proceeds will go to the Ocean Cleanup Project. So register now for the free ones and you will be notified when the sale and auction starts. We believe these are the first collectible NFTs with beer labels on Cardano. So you can get them from Ada4oceans.com or berchpool.io .

Delegators who staking with Berch also earn BerchCoin – a native asset of Cardano and can redeem it monthly for rewards. We hope to list it on Cardano’s DEXs in the fall. We have some great products coming to Cardano and there will also be other partnerships with Akademia for more NFTs for collectible beer labels. There is so much to do on Cardano – we’re still in the early stages and it’s so good to be a part of this warm community! Thanks for including us. People can find us on social sites like Twitter and Facebook . Get in touch with us. Delegators get extra rewards in ADA and BerchCoin when they delegate, so we’d love to know who you are and answer questions if you have any!

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