Run a Validator

Create Your Validator an installation script

As mentioned in the previous page, there is a script located in this repo https://github.com/defi-ventures/BCX-atlantis-testnet-2-node-compiled.git If you open the file there called create-validator.sh, it contains the commands needed to setup a validator just make sure first that the node is still running. In the file, you can change your commission rates, amount of BCX tokens you will initially self delegate, the name of your key and the name of your validator which is the moniker.

Create Your Validator without the script

Your node consensus public key (blockxvalconspub...) can be used to create a new validator by staking BCX tokens. You can find your validator pubkey by running:
blockxd tendermint show-validator
To create your validator on testnet, just use the following command:
blockxd tx staking create-validator \
--amount=100000000000000000000000abcx \
--pubkey=$(blockxd tendermint show-validator) \
--moniker="choose a moniker" \
--chain-id=<chain_id> \
--commission-rate="0.05" \
--commission-max-rate="0.10" \
--commission-max-change-rate="0.01" \
--min-self-delegation="1000000" \
--gas="300000" \
--gas-prices="1000000000abcx" \
--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.
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 1000000 means your validator will never have a self-delegation lower than 1000000 abcx
You can confirm that you are in the validator set by using a third party explorer.

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. If 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 to not 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 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.
blockxd tx staking edit-validator
--moniker="choose a moniker" \
--website="https://blockx.org" \
--identity=6A0D65E29A4CBC8E \
--details="To infinity and beyond!" \
--chain-id=<chain_id> \
--gas="300000" \
--gas-prices="1000000000abcx" \
--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:
blockxd query staking 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:
blockxd 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 in order to be able to get block proposer rewards again (depends on the zone fee distribution).
blockxd 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:
blockxd query tendermint-validator-set | grep "$(blockxd tendermint show-address)"
You should now see your validator in one of BlockX explorers. You are looking for the bech32 encoded address in the ~/.blockxd/config/priv_validator.json file.
To be in the validator set, you need to have more total voting power than the 100th validator.

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 blockxd. The node will shutdown with a zero exit code at that given height after committing the block.

Common Problems

Problem #1: My validator has voting_power: 0

Your validator has become jailed. Validators get jailed, i.e. get removed from the active validator set, if they do not vote on 500 of the last 10000 blocks, or if they double sign.
If you got jailed for downtime, you can get your voting power back to your validator. First, if blockxd is not running, start it up again:
blockxd start
Wait for your full node to catch up to the latest block. Then, you can unjail your validator
Lastly, check your validator again to see if your voting power is back.
blockxd 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 node crashes because of too many open files

The default number of files Linux can open (per-process) is 1024. blockxd 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 blockxd start.
If you are using systemd or another process manager to launch blockxd this may require some configuration at that level. A sample systemd file to fix this issue is below:
# /etc/systemd/system/blockxd.service
[Unit]
Description=BlockX Node
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/go/bin/blockxd start
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=4096
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target