Run a Validator

Becoming a validator

Once you properly set up a full node, you can become a validator node and start earning by validating the chain transactions.

Requirements

If you want to become an Empe validator you need to:

1. Be a full node and cosmovisor up. If you are not, please follow the full node configuration guide and Cosmovisor setup

2. The node must be synchronized

emped status | jq .SyncInfo.catching_up

The command above should return

false

3. Own enough tokens. To become a validator you need at least 2 empe tokens to create the validator, and for transaction fee. You can obtain your tokens from faucet: https://faucet-testnet.empe.io

1. Add wallet key

Inside the testnet you can use the Ledger, but you can also use the wallet software with the emped. However, if you wish to use Ledger, please add the --ledger flat to any command.

Please remember to copy the 12-word seed phrase in a secure place. They are your mnemonic. If you lose them you lose all your tokens and access to your validator.

Create the first wallet with the following command:

emped keys add <KEY_NAME>
# Enter a password that you can remember

The output of the command will provide the 24 words that are the mnemonic.

Create two wallets one for the validator and the second for the vesting account: example

If you are using the Ledger device you must first connect it to your computer, start the Cosmos application (on the device), and run the command

emped keys add <KEY_NAME> --ledger
# Enter a password that you can remember

In this case, the 12 words are not provided because they have already been configured in the Ledger initialization

emped keys add validator
Enter keyring passphrase:
Re-enter keyring passphrase:

- name: validator
  type: local
  address: empe1atqq8lmeptgn2jlx2q8r42p572yhh6lzle7vng
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.crypto.secp256k1.PubKey","key":"A8D47crCW+YkFGduj6brpuzectp3D61xRIx/qbEGGTif"}'
  mnemonic: ""
  
emped keys add vesting
Enter keyring passphrase:

If you don't have tokens get some from faucet (https://testnet.ping.pub/empe/faucet) or ask on a validators group.

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.

Create Your Validator

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

emped tendermint show-validator

To create your validator use the following command:

emped tx staking create-validator \
  --amount=1000000uempe \
  --pubkey=$(emped tendermint show-validator) \
  --moniker=<YOUR_MONIKER> \
  --chain-id=empe-testnet-2\
  --commission-rate="0.10" \
  --commission-max-rate="0.20" \
  --commission-max-change-rate="0.01" \
  --gas="auto" \
  --min-self-delegation="1000000" \
  --fees=20uempe \
  --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.

You can confirm that you are in the validator set by using an explorer.

Confirm Your Validator is Running

Your validator is active if the following command returns anything:

emped query tendermint-validator-set | grep "$(emped tendermint show-validator | jq .key  | tr -d \")"

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

To be in the validator set, you need to have more total voting power than the 50th validator.