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

aiozd tendermint show-validator

To create your validator, just use the following command:

aiozd tx staking create-validator \
  --amount=1000aioz \
  --pubkey=$(aiozd tendermint show-validator) \
  --moniker="choose a moniker" \
  --chain-id=<chain_id> \
  --commission-rate="0.10" \
  --commission-max-rate="0.20" \
  --commission-max-change-rate="0.01" \
  --min-self-delegation="1000000000" \
  --gas="auto" \
  --gas-prices="1000000000attoaioz" \
  --from=<key_name>

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

aiozd 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.

{
  "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": "attoaioz",
      "amount": "1000000000000000000"
    }
  },
  "deposit": "100000000000000000000attoaioz"
}

To submit the proposal, use the following command:

aiozd tx gov submit-proposal create-validator \
  validator.json \
  --chain-id=<chain_id> \
  --gas="auto" \
  --gas-prices="1000000000attoaioz" \
  --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 aiozvalconspub can be used to create a new validator by staking tokens. You can find your validator pubkey by running:

aiozd tendermint show-validator

Next, craft your aiozd gentx command.

aiozd gentx \
  --amount <amount_of_delegation_attoaioz> \
  --commission-rate <commission_rate> \
  --commission-max-rate <commission_max_rate> \
  --commission-max-change-rate <commission_max_change_rate> \
  --pubkey <consensus_pubkey> \
  --name <key_name>

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.

aiozd tx staking edit-validator
  --moniker="choose a moniker" \
  --website="https://aioz.network" \
  --identity=6A0D65E29A4CBC8E \
  --details="To infinity and beyond!" \
  --chain-id=<chain_id> \
  --gas="auto" \
  --gas-prices="1000000000attoaioz" \
  --from=<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:

aiozd query staking validator <account_aioz>

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:

aiozd 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).

aiozd 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:

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

You should now see your validator in one of the AIOZ Network explorers. You are looking for the address in the ~/.aioz/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 aiozd. After committing the block, the node will shut down with a zero exit code at that given height.

Common Problems

Problem #1: My validator has voting_power: 0

Your validator has become jailed. Validators get jailed, i.e., removed from the active validator set, if they do not vote on 500 of the last 10000 blocks or double sign.

If you got jailed for downtime, you could get your voting power back to your validator. First, if aiozd is not running, start it up again:

aiozd start

Wait for your full node to catch up to the latest block. Then, you can unjail your validator

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

aiozd 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 aiozd crashes because of too many open files

The default number of files Linux can open (per-process) is 1024. aiozd 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 aiozd start. If you are using systemd or another process manager to launch aiozd this may require some configuration at that level. A sample systemd file to fix this issue is below:

# /etc/systemd/system/aiozd.service
[Unit]
Description=AIOZ Network Node
After=network.target

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

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target