NBA star Spencer Dinwiddie enlists Coinbase Cloud to power his blockchain community nodes

January 26, 2022

A driver of blockchain innovation, Dinwiddie taps Coinbase Cloud to power Calaxy’s nodes on the Flow and Polkadot blockchains

Brooklyn Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie is one of the most prominent professional athletes in the United States to invest in digital assets and promote innovation with blockchain technology. 

In November 2019 he worked to tokenize his NBA contract. In August 2020 he invested in Dapper Labs—the team behind the Flow blockchain—then, in the following month, he announced the launch of Calaxy, a blockchain-based app for influencers.

Coinbase Cloud’s infrastructure will power nodes for Calaxy on Flow and Polkadot. The concept will include  Calaxy to run a Flow verification node on the Coinbase Cloud. After, we will power Calaxy’s consensus and collection nodes on Flow, and a node on Polkadot. Calaxy’s nodes on Flow and Polkadot will be open for public delegation.

“As Calaxy becomes the social engagement application of the future, it is business-critical for us to work with innovative and credible partners like Bison Trails [now Coinbase Cloud] , who will support the backend infrastructure and drive participation with the utmost security. The growth within the industry has presented a tremendous opportunity for a lot of emerging blockchain-powered companies. The benefits of delegating to Calaxy nodes will further enhance the industry and continue to foster a collaborative environment as a whole.” - Spencer Dinwiddie

Coinbase Cloud  will be running nodes as an infrastructure provider to power Calaxy’s staking, enabling Calaxy to participate in the Flow and Polkadot networks without having to run the node infrastructure themselves. By participating in these networks, Calaxy will be eligible to earn participatory rewards.

Dinwiddie’s fans will also be able to delegate their $FLOW and $DOT tokens to Calaxy’s nodes,powered by Coinbase Cloud, and earn rewards for participating in the networks. Fans who have these tokens, and want to participate, will be able to find information about how to delegate to Calaxy’s nodes on the Calaxy website.

"We’re excited to work with Spencer Dinwiddie to power staking for Calaxy. As an innovative thinker in the crypto space, and a prominent professional athlete, Spencer Dinwiddie’s participation on Flow and Polkadot will help move the ecosystem forward by introducing more people to crypto. We look forward to seeing how our work together will help grow the Flow and Polkadot communities." - Joe Lallouz, Coinbase Cloud

Coinbase Cloud powers critical infrastructure for the world’s leading digital asset exchanges, custodians, funds, and applications — with industry-leading availability, security, and a 99% platform uptime guarantee.

Learn more about Flow and Polkadot in our guides.