Run a Validator

Configure a validator node to propose blocks and earn staking rewards

Pre-requisite Readings

• Installation
• Run a Full Node

What is a Validator?

Validators are responsible for committing new blocks to the blockchain through voting. A validator's stake is slashed if they become unavailable or sign blocks at the same height. Please read about Sentry Node Architecture to protect your node from DDOS attacks and to ensure high-availability.

Warning

If you want to become a validator for mainnet, you should research security.

You may want to skip the next section if you have already set up a full node.

Create Your Validator

Your cosmosvalconspub consensus public key fron tendermint can be used to create a new validator by staking tokens. You can find your validator pubkey by running:

Copy ethermintd tendermint show-validator

To create your validator, just use the following command:

Copy ethermintcli tx staking create-validator \ --amount=1000000aphoton \ --pubkey=$(ethermintd tendermint show-validator) \ --moniker=<ethermint_validator> \ --chain-id=<chain_id> \ --commission-rate="0.10" \ --commission-max-rate="0.20" \ --commission-max-change-rate="0.01" \ --min-self-delegation="1" \ --gas="auto" \ --gas-prices="0.025uatom" \ --from=<key_name>

When specifying commission parameters, the commission-max-change-rate is used to measure % point change over the commission-rate. E.g. 1% to 2% is a 100% rate increase, but only 1 percentage point.

Min-self-delegation is a stritly positive integer that represents the minimum amount of self-delegated voting power your validator must always have. A min-self-delegation of 1 means your validator will never have a self-delegation lower than 1000000aphoton

You can confirm that you are in the validator set by using a third party explorer.

Genesis Transactions

A genesis transaction (aka gentx) is a JSON file carrying a self-delegation from a validator. All genesis transactions are collected by a genesis coordinator and validated against an initial genesis.json file.

A gentx does three things:

1. Makes the validator account you created into a validator operator account (i.e. the account that controls the validator).
2. Self-delegates the provided amount of staking tokens.
3. Link the operator account with a Tendermint node pubkey that will be used for signing blocks. If no --pubkey flag is provided, it defaults to the local node pubkey created via the ethermintd init command above.

If you want to participate in genesis as a validator, you need to justify that you have some stake at genesis, create one (or multiple) transactions to bond this stake to your validator address, and include this transaction in the genesis file.

Your cosmosvalconspub, as shown on the section above, can be used to create a validator transaction on genesis as well.

Next, craft your ethermintd gentx command:

When specifying commission parameters, the commission-max-change-rate is used to measure % point change over the commission-rate. E.g. 1% to 2% is a 100% rate increase, but only 1 percentage point.

Copy ethermintd gentx \ --amount <amount_of_delegation_uatom> \ --commission-rate <commission_rate> \ --commission-max-rate <commission_max_rate> \ --commission-max-change-rate <commission_max_change_rate> \ --pubkey $(ethermintd tendermint show-validator) \ --name $KEY

For more on gentx, use the help flag: ethermintd gentx -h

Confirm Your Validator is Running

Your validator is active if the following command returns anything:

Copy ethermintcli query tendermint-validator-set | grep "$(ethermintd tendermint show-validator)"

You should now see your validator in one of the block explorers. You are looking for the bech32 encoded address in the ~/.ethermintd/config/priv_validator.json file.

To be in the validator set, you need to have more total voting power than the 100th validator.

Halt Your Validator Node

When attempting to perform routine maintenance or planning for an upcoming coordinated upgrade, it can be useful to have your validator systematically and gracefully halt the chain and shutdown the node.

You can achieve this by setting one of the following flags during when using the ethermintd start command:

• --halt-height: to the block height at which to shutdown the node
• --halt-time: to the minimum block time (in Unix seconds) at which to shutdown the node

The node will stop processing blocks with a zero exit code at that given height/time after committing the block.

Next

Start and connect a client to a running network