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validator-setup.md

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Validator Setup

::: warning Current Testnet The current testnet is gaia-8000. :::

Before setting up your validator node, make sure you've already gone through the Full Node Setup guide.

Running a Validator Node

Validators are responsible for committing new blocks to the blockchain through voting. A validator's stake is slashed if they become unavailable, double sign a transaction, or don't cast their votes. Please read about Sentry Node Architecture to protect your node from DDOS attacks and to ensure high-availability.

::: danger Warning If you want to become a validator for the Hub's mainnet, you should research security. :::

Create Your Validator

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

gaiad tendermint show-validator

Next, craft your gaiacli tx create-validator command:

::: warning Note Don't use more steak thank you have! You can always get more by using the Faucet! :::

gaiacli tx create-validator \
  --amount=5steak \
  --pubkey=$(gaiad tendermint show-validator) \
  --address-validator=<account_cosmosval>
  --moniker="choose a moniker" \
  --chain-id=<chain_id> \
  --name=<key_name> \
  --commission-rate="0.10" \
  --commission-max-rate="0.20" \
  --commission-max-change-rate="0.01"

Note: 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.

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 to. Make sure to provide input for every flag below, otherwise the field will default to empty (--moniker defaults to the machine name).

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 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.

gaiacli tx edit-validator
  --validator=<account_cosmos>
  --moniker="choose a moniker" \
  --website="https://cosmos.network" \
  --identity=6A0D65E29A4CBC8E
  --details="To infinity and beyond!"
  --chain-id=<chain_id> \
  --name=<key_name> \
  --commission-rate="0.10"

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:

gaiacli query validator <account_cosmos>

Track Validator Signing Information

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

gaiacli query signing-information <validator-pubkey>\
  --chain-id=<chain_id>

Unjail Validator

When a validator is "jailed" for downtime, you must submit an Unjail transaction in order to be able to get block proposer rewards again (depends on the zone fee distribution).

gaiacli tx unjail \
	--from=<key_name> \
	--chain-id=<chain_id>
  --validator=<account_cosmosval> \
  --chain-id=gaia-6002

Confirm Your Validator is Running

Your validator is active if the following command returns anything:

gaiacli query tendermint-validator-set | grep "$(gaiad tendermint show-validator)"

You should also be able to see your validator on the Explorer. You are looking for the bech32 encoded address in the ~/.gaiad/config/priv_validator.json file.

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

Common Problems

Problem #1: My validator has voting_power: 0

Your validator has become auto-unbonded. In gaia-8000, we unbond validators if they do not vote on 50 of the last 100 blocks. Since blocks are proposed every ~2 seconds, a validator unresponsive for ~100 seconds will become unbonded. This usually happens when your gaiad process crashes.

Here's how you can return the voting power back to your validator. First, if gaiad is not running, start it up again:

gaiad start

Wait for your full node to catch up to the latest block. Next, run the following command. Note that <cosmos> is the address of your validator account, and <name> is the name of the validator account. You can find this info by running gaiacli keys list.

gaiacli tx unjail <cosmos> --chain-id=<chain_id> --name=<name>

::: danger Warning If you don't wait for gaiad to sync before running unjail, you will receive an error message telling you your validator is still jailed. :::

Lastly, check your validator again to see if your voting power is back.

gaiacli status

You may notice that your voting power is less than it used to be. That's because you got slashed for downtime!

Problem #2: My gaiad crashes because of too many open files

The default number of files Linux can open (per-process) is 1024. gaiad is known to open more than 1024 files. This causes the process to crash. A quick fix is to run ulimit -n 4096 (increase the number of open files allowed) and then restart the process with gaiad start. If you are using systemd or another process manager to launch gaiad this may require some configuration at that level. A sample systemd file to fix this issue is below:

# /etc/systemd/system/gaiad.service
[Unit]
Description=Cosmos Gaia Node
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/go/bin/gaiad start
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=4096

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target