Passive income, the holy grail of modern times to achieve financial independence, meets Cryptocurrencies, the future of finance.
The result? Masternodes.
I have been digging into everything masternode recently and found out that, while possible, it isn’t the easiest thing for the average Joe to setup right. Entire books and manuals are found online to properly manage the process, and on top of that you will need servers running the thing 24/7.
In comes Nodexo. A Latvian based ‘masternode-as-a-service’ start-up that takes all the effort out of setting up and running a masternode. Launched just months ago in august 2018, the company is already serving close to 500 customers, running over 80 masternodes. And therein lies one of the strengths of the Nodexo business model.
While some masternodes can be setup with a couple of hundred euro’s, most are pretty expensive to start, since they require you to buy an often substantial amount of the underlying coin.
Nodexo gives you the option to only buy a share of a masternode. Letting multiple people pitch in to buy a masternode together and sharing in the revenue. This means that even with €50,00 you can start your masternode journey and begin with compounding your passive income, reinvesting the coins you received into an ever increasing share.
Furthermore, besides the coins you want to invest into a masternode, there are no other upfront costs since Nodexo earns money based on a % of the masternode rewards you receive.
The financial side isn’t the only way how Nodexo makes it possible for the non tech-savvy individual to start investing in masternodes. Literally every technical aspect of investing in masternodes comes down to registering on their platform and clicking 2 buttons:
Deposit your coins: 
Invest in the node: 
The rest will be done by the team of Nodexo.
Well, let’s backtrack a little. Nodexo has even made the process of buying the coins needed for the masternode as easy as possible, giving you the option of depositing Bitcoin of Ethereum instead of the needed coins. They will trade them for your masternode coins, at a price of course.
You will receive confirmation emails of your deposits, and when the masternode has been launched. After that it is time to sit back, relax and let the masternode do the working for you, earning you passive income from that moment on.
The dashboard
Nodexo has put some time into making a slick dashboard with a nice UI, showing you all the relevant information regarding your investments. You can easily find your masternodes (including a direct link to find the masternode information at the block explorer), your payouts, and your wallets. The worth of your current investment is calculated in real time and for the sake of transparency the total amount of masternodes running and payouts sent can be found.
Besides that, nothing groundbreaking of revolutionary, but it’s pleasing on the eyes, and easily navigable.
Security
Since Nodexo is located in Latvia it is based in the European union and compliant with all European cryptocurrency regulations and rules. Your account can be further secured by using Google 2-Step Authentication.
Nodexo has partnered up with CryptoPolice which “has the aim to develop products that assure effective protection of users against online fraud and scams.” CryptoPolice helps with checking certain projects before they get the green light to be added to the Nodexo platform, and continually scans projects to discover any suspicious behavior.
However, it is important to remember that the private keys of your masternode coins are in the possession of Nodexo, since they need them to host the masternode. And even though you can withdraw your funds whenever you want, this does bring a risk. Nodexo is still in its early phase and if anything happens to the company this could mean you lose your funds.
After further investigation I have learned that Nodexo is looking into the possibility of letting the clients have their own private keys, but that for now this isn't yet accomplished.
While in general I’m leaning to a very positive verdict concerning Nodexo, the above isn’t the only downside of the platform.
Nodexo still needs some time to grow
Since it’s pretty expensive to start a masternode it can take a lot of time for the total amount of required coins to be acquired by different investors. The result can be that your funds are idly sitting and waiting for more people to join in before they actually generate any extra income. As of the time writing Nodexo is only actively hosting masternodes for 3 different coins, Zcoin, GoByte and Horizen, while waiting for enough funds In the other possible masternode coins.
The total amount of possible masternodes offered is also relatively low, although this can be a matter of only wanting to host viable and decent projects, approved by CryptoPolice. Nodexo is open for suggestions and will continue adding the right projects to invest in. It is worth mentioning that Nuls has been approved a couple of weeks ago and still isn’t open for investing, so it might take time before new additions are actually live to invest in.
These negatives can however get negated if Nodexo gets more traction in the cryptoworld. The team seems to be active and working hard on making this successful and I expect that if they keep this up Nodexo will get more known, which in turn will lead to more customers.
The business model
Then there is the fee to run a masternode through Nodexo, and to be honest at this moment it seems to be a bit high. Nodexo charges 15% of your masternode payouts. The fee used to be 7% before, a lot more agreeable, but because of the continuing downtrend In crypto prices the fee has more than doubled since January. It remains to be seen if they will reduce the fee when crypto prices rise again, but until then this may mean that tech-savvy people are better of doing it themselves.
Still, there is no upfront cost, and no monthly server fee, so for the average consumer interested in making a bit of extra passive income Nodexo can be the the go to way for starting with investing in masternodes.
Conclusion
I will continue to keep an eye on Nodexo, and invest into their platform. I enjoy not having to start with setting up and hosting masternodes myself for now, and Nodexo’s ease of use makes it very interesting for me. So far the service has been excellent, the platform does what it promises and the payouts have been constant. I hope Nodexo can keep building and expanding.
It is also worth noting that the Nodexo team is easy to communicate with. The CEO, Oskars Kupcs, and the CTO, Viesturs Slaidins, have both responded to my enquiries in a very timely fashion. Including Saturday evenings! If they can keep this kind of support up when they grow bigger is hard to say, but the intent seems to be there.
I will maintain exploring possibilities within the crypto- and masternodeworld and will share my experiences. Please feel free to comment any questions and/or recommendations below.
If you are interested in also starting with investing in masternodes, and want to support me you can use the referral link below. This means that I will receive a part of the fee that normally goes to the team of Nodexo (your payouts will remain the same!). Note however that this post has been in no way incentivized by Nodexo, and that they did not sponsor me.
Start investing in masternodes with Nodexo
