Run Validator on Mainnet

Before setting up your validator node, ensure you have already gone through the Full Node Setup guide.

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.

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

Create Your Validator

Your ATOM can be used to create a new validator by staking tokens. You can find your validator pubkey by running:

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atomd tendermint show-validator

To create your validator, just use the following 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.

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Min-self-delegation is a strictly positive integer that represents the minimum amount of self-delegated voting power your validator must always have. A min-self-delegation of 1000000000 means your validator will never have a self-delegation lower than 1ATOM.

Using a third-party explorer, you can confirm that you are in the validator set.

Become a Validator via Governance

To become a validator while the staking is in governance mode, you must go through a governance process run by the current validators.

Your atomvalconspub can be used to create a new validator by staking tokens. You can find your validator pubkey by running:

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atomd tendermint show-validator

You need to prepare a JSON file validator.json, before sending the transaction that submits your proposal on-chain. This file contains the information of the validator and the governance proposal.

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{  "title": "set a title",  "description": "set a description",  "validator": {    "description": {      "moniker": "choose a moniker"    },    "commission": {      "rate": "0.10",      "max_rate": "0.20",      "max_change_rate": "0.01"    },    "min_self_delegation": "1000000000000000000",    "delegator_address": <delegator_address>,    "validator_address": <validator_address>,    "pubkey": <consensus_pubkey>,    "value": {      "denom": "attoatom",      "amount": "1000000000000000000"    }  },  "deposit": "100000000000000000000attoatom"}

To submit the proposal, use the following command:

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atomd tx gov submit-proposal create-validator \  validator.json \  --chain-id=<chain_id> \  --gas="auto" \  --gas-prices="1000000000attoatom" \  --from=<key_name>

Participate in Genesis as a Validator

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 atomvalconspub can be used to create a new validator by staking tokens. You can find your validator pubkey by running:

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atomd tendermint show-validator

Next, craft your atomd gentx command.

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

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.

You can then submit your gentx on the launch repository(opens in a new tab). These gentx will be used to form the final genesis file.

Edit Validator Description

You can edit your validator's public description. This info is to identify your validator and will be relied on by delegators to decide which validators to stake. Make sure to provide input for every flag below. In case a flag is not included in the command the field will default to empty (--moniker defaults to the machine name) if the field has never been set or remain the same if it has been set in the past.

The <key_name> specifies which validator you are editing. If you choose not to include certain flags, remember that the --from flag must be included to identify the validator to update.

The --identity can be used as to verify identity with systems like Keybase or UPort. When using with Keybase --identity should be populated with a 16-digit string that is generated with a keybase.io(opens in a new tab) account. It's a cryptographically secure method of verifying your identity across multiple online networks. The Keybase API allows us to retrieve your Keybase avatar. This is how you can add a logo to your validator profile.Note: The commission-rate value must adhere to the following invariants:

• Must be between 0 and the validator's commission-max-rate

• Must not exceed the validator's commission-max-change-rate, which is maximum % point change rate per day. In other words, a validator can only change its commission once per day and within commission-max-change-rate bounds.

View Validator Description

View the validator's information with this command:

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atomd query staking validator <account_atom>

Track Validator Signing Information

To keep track of a validator's signatures in the past, you can do so by using the signing-info command:

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atomd query slashing signing-info <validator-pubkey>\  --chain-id=<chain_id>

Unjail Validator

When a validator is "jailed" for downtime, you must submit an Unjail transaction from the operator account to get block proposer rewards again (depending on the zone fee distribution).

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atomd tx slashing unjail \	--from=<key_name> \	--chain-id=<chain_id>

Confirm Your Validator is Running

Your validator is active if the following command returns anything:

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atomd query tendermint-validator-set | grep "$(atomd tendermint show-address)"

You should now see your validator in one of the atom Network explorers. You are looking for the address in the ~/.atom/config/priv_validator.json file.

Halting Your Validator

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. You can achieve this by either setting the halt-height to the height at which you want your node to shutdown or by passing the --halt-height flag to atomd. After committing the block, the node will shut down with a zero exit code at that given height.