Skip to main content

Run Validator

Validator Hardware Requirements​

1. Mainnet​

  • VPS running recent versions of Mac OS X or Linux.
  • IMPORTANT 3T GB of free disk space, solid-state drive(SSD), gp3, 8k IOPS, 500 MB/S throughput, read latency <1ms (if start with snap sync, it will need NVMe SSD).
  • 16 cores of CPU and 64 gigabytes of memory (RAM).
  • Suggest m5zn.3xlarge or r7iz.4xlarge instance type on AWS, or c2-standard-16 on Google cloud.
  • A broadband Internet connection with upload/download speeds of 5 megabyte per second

2. Testnet​

  • CPU: 4core, Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8175M CPU @ 2.50GHz
  • Memory: 16 GB
  • Disk: ~1.5 TB
  • Network Bandwidth: Upto 25 Gbps
  • EBS Bandwidth: Upto 9.5 Gbps

Setting up Validator Node​

1. Install BSC Fullnode​

Follow the instructions here to set up a full node.

2. Start Validator Node​

There are 2 ways to start the validator node.

  1. Using the command line as below: !!! Warning Please do not expose your RPC endpoints to public network.
## generate the consensus key and input the password
echo {your-password to the mining account} > password.txt
echo {your-password for the bls wallet} > blspassword.txt
geth --config ./config.toml --datadir ./node --syncmode snap -unlock {accounts to sign txs, including your mining account at least} --miner.etherbase {the address of your mining account} --password password.txt --blspassword blspassword.txt --mine --vote --allow-insecure-unlock --cache 18000

OR

  1. Follow the below steps as an alternative:

  • Step 1. Create a voting key first: ./geth bls account new --datadir <path>

    • It will generate a wallet if it has not been created before, you have to keep the wallet password. If the wallet has been created before, you only need to provide the password. The password length should >=10 characters. Then it will create an account.

      Note: Remember, you can create several accounts, but only one will be used.

  • Step 2. You can view keys in the wallet by: ./geth bls account list --datadir <path>

    • Remember the first one listed here will be used as the voting key, other keys are not used right now.

  • Step 3. Update the config file: config.toml (Update node and eth.miner section in config.toml file.)

    • add 2 fields under Node section: BLSPasswordFile & BLSWalletDir.

      You need to provide the file: /<path>/bls/blspassword.txt, may generate it by: echo <WalletPassword> >/<path>/bls/blspassword.txt

    • add 1 field in [Eth.Miner] section: VoteEnable = true to enable it. Or you may manually add an option on node start: geth --vote to enable it as well.

  • The content of the config.toml for example:

      ...
      [Node]
      BLSPasswordFile = "/<path>/bls/blspassword.txt"
      BLSWalletDir = "/<path>/bls/wallet"
      ...
      [Eth.Miner]
      VoteEnable = true
      ...

Note: if the node prints: "BLS wallet did not exists.", then you may add the flag to specify it: –blswallet /<path>/bls/wallet

  • Step 4: restart
    • You may only provide the flag: --vote, if you did not specify it in config.toml Then you may go ahead, just restart the node.

For more details, please look into this: https://forum.bnbchain.org/t/bnb-smart-chain-testnet-luban-upgrade-announcement/1331 (section: https://forum.bnbchain.org/t/bnb-smart-chain-testnet-luban-upgrade-announcement/1331#h-22important-for-validator-operator-8)

Post Running​

1. Monitor node status​

To get started quickly, run GethExporter in a Docker container.

docker run -it -d -p 9090:9090 \
  -e "GETH=http://mygethserverhere.com:8545" \
  hunterlong/gethexporter

2. Update validator profile​

You can submit a PullRequest to this repository to update your information: https://github.com/bnb-chain/validator-directory Reference: https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/6976

3. Publish Validator Information​

Please submit a Pull Request to this repo https://github.com/bnb-chain/validator-directory

This repository is a place for validator candidates to give potential delegators a brief introduction about your team and infrastructure, and present your ecosystem contributions.

4. Stop Validating​

You can stop mining new blocks by sending commands in geth console

Connect to your validator node with geth attach ipc:path/to/geth.ipc

miner.stop()

To resume validating,

miner.start()