To get a quick refresher on what a blockchain node validator is, head over the my previous blog post on this essential blockchain player.
For today’s post, I want to bring this concept to life with a traditional enterprise player entering this space.
Deutsche Telekom (DT), a German telecommunications firm, is actively investing into web3 and the underlying infrastructure of blockchain. Per reports, the firm is already performing node validation services on several blockchains: Q, Flow, Celo, Chainlink, and Ethereum.
Just last month, the telco announced that they would also be participating in the Polygon network.
Here’s what I’ve found from publicly available sources:
- Will become 1 of 100 validators for Polygon Supernets solution (source)
- DT does not stake their own crypto assets, but instead relies on others and takes a percentage of the rewards (source)
- DT’s Blockchain Solutions Center lead, Dirk Röde, is quoted saying that the firm “is also making significant commitments to expand its presence and reliability as an infrastructure provider in the web3 domain” (source)
There’s not much other public data that I’ve come across, but those three points are pretty impactful.
Now, you might be wondering — why is this so significant? Try googling how many traditional enterprises are running validating nodes on public blockchain networks. You’ll find just about no others are publicly.
It’s a big indication to the market, especially to traditional infrastructure providers, that there is potentially something here.
Whether it’s revenue from your own staked crypto-assets, it’s the margin you can charge for staking others’ crypto-assets, it’s the data insights you get from having a full copy of the ledger, it’s simply a marketing ploy, or something else — there is a potential financial and brand value for traditional enterprise and brands.
It goes without saying that there are certainly legal, regulatory, business, technical, operational and other risks to take into account, but there might just be something here. Seemingly, Deutsche Telekom has figured it out!
Very interesting real life example — I’ll be following developments in this area closely!
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