Meet the Tezos Bakers: Zir0h Edition

Tezos runs on people as much as it runs on code. Behind every block baked, every attestation signed, and every cycle completed, there are bakers, independent operators and teams, making sure the network stays online, secure, and running smoothly.

In this series, Meet the Tezos Bakers, I want to shine a light on these people and teams who are securing the network from the inside. From early adopters who joined during the wild west days, to newer bakers stepping in during the latest cycles, each one has a story that reflects a different chapter of Tezos’ history.

Today, we’re meeting Zir0h, the person behind Zir0h’s Bakery, to learn more about their journey, their day-to-day reality running infrastructure, and how they see the future of Tezos evolving.

Bakery Name: Zir0h’s Bakery
Started Baking: Sep 6, 2023 (Ghostnet), Oct 18, 2023 (Mainnet)
Bakery Address: tz1T1fRJmpPp1pN2z45sivxdbKNQtyatzCVx
Accepting: Staking & Delegations

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey before Tezos?

I’ve been a big computer nerd all my life, I’ve started tinkering around the age of 12. Overclocking, LAN parties, you name it. I made my hobby into my job. I’ve been a sysadmin for 15 years now, which is what led me to Tezos eventually. Outside of tech I like to stay active. Been training Muay Thai for over 10 years now, I stopped competing when the corona pandemic happened and then switched to coaching (I still spar with the advanced students though, I like that too much). I supplement that training with calisthenics and running (it’s been years since I ran over 10KM, but I succumbed to peer pressure and signed up for the 20KM of Brussels again)

2. When did you first discover Tezos, and what made you stay?

Mike Shinoda from Linking Park was live streaming on Twitch and told the viewers about NFT and blockchain. Tezos was in there because he was working on Ziggurats at that time. That’s also when I first started my rpc node (I wanted to get an advantage over the others, the public rpc nodes at that time couldn’t handle the load). During that time there was also a lot to do on hicetnunc. I got involved with Teia, which is the community run fork of HEN when it shut down. I’ve always found it very cool that we could pick up after the abandonment.

3. What is it really like running a bakery day to day for you?

It’s pretty easy to do if you’re curious about tech. I started investigating the different deployment options and finally settled on TezBake. You get a ledger, 6k XTZ, copy-paste some commands and you have yourself a baker. For monitoring I also use TezWatch, which is a discord monitoring bot also developed by the very helpful and talented people over at TzC. One of the first things I do in the morning is check if it has sent any messages. If I see the red 999+ notifications counter it means the baker has issues and I’m instantly wide awake, no coffee needed…

4. Why do you personally bake?

At first I started baking because I like the technical aspects, but now I keep it running to support the community and because I really think Tezos is the way forward. For the technical aspects, now I run a couple of testnet bakers.

5. What would you love to see happen in the Tezos ecosystem over the next few years?

Personally I always looked for a baker that was active in the community, as a starter there should be a couple of communication channels linked to the baker page on tzkt. If you ever have questions, you should be able to contact your baker and get a response fairly quickly.

6. What would you love to see happen in the Tezos ecosystem over the next few years?

I’d love to see some more development on BLS signer alternatives. I tested the NL BLS signer myself already, there are also Rich’s rossignol and TzC’s TzSign. I don’t like depending on the ledger blackbox.

And that wraps up the first edition of Meet the Tezos Bakers: Zir0h Edition.

Different stories, different backgrounds, different reasons for baking, but all contributing to the same network we use every day.

Zir0h is the first baker featured in this series, and there are already more lined up to follow. I’ll be continuing these spotlights over time, sharing more of the people working behind the scenes to keep Tezos running.

If there’s a specific baker you’d like to see featured, feel free to tag them in the comments or reach out.

There are many more stories to tell, and we’ll be exploring them one baker at a time.