Becoming a Validator

Before proceeding to create the a validator, first make sure that your Initia node is fully synced to the latest height. This can be done by running comparing the latest block height of your node with those of the network.

1. Create the Validator Account

   First, you need to create an acount for your validator. This account will be used to run the validator node. To do so, you can run the following command:

   initiad keys add validator
   

   You then need to fund that account with the network’s gas token.

2. Register the Validator

   Once you have funded the validator account, you can send a CreateValidator transaction to the network to register as a validator.

   initiad tx mstaking create-validator \\
       --amount="<bond_amount>" \\
       --pubkey=$(initiad tendermint show-validator) \\
       --moniker="<your_moniker>" \\
       --identity="<keybase_identity>" \\
       --chain-id="<chain_id>" \\
       --from="<key_name>" \\
       --commission-rate="0.10" \\
       --commission-max-rate="0.20" \\
       --commission-max-change-rate="0.01"
   

   Flag	Description
   bond_amount	This is the amount of tokens you wish to self-bond. It can be in uinit or other tokens that are whitelisted as liquidity provider (LP) tokens.
   pubkey	The public key necessary for validator consensus. Typically, this is obtained from the output of the initiadd tendermint show-validator command.
   your_moniker	A human-readable name for your validator. This should match either the moniker you used in the initiadd init command or a moniker registered in the ~/.inita/config/config.toml file.
   chain_id	The ID of the chain you wish to join as a validator. It must correspond with the ID specified in the genesis.json file.
   key_name	The account address or name used to submit the transaction. The output of initiadd keys show <key name> should correctly display your account details. If not, verify the accuracy of your key_name or keyring settings. A fee is required to submit the transaction, paid in the blockchain’s native tokens.
   identity	An optional field for adding your Keybase identity information, which allows displaying an icon for your validator. This requires a 16-digit string associated with your Keybase account. Without this, no icon will be displayed in user interfaces.
   commission-rate	The commission rate you charge delegators, expressed as a fraction. It must be set above the min_commission_rate parameter specified by the mStaking protocol.
   commission-max-rate	The maximum commission rate you can charge as a validator.
   commission-max-change-rate	The maximum daily change in commission rate that is permissible for the validator.

   Once the message is submitted and successfully confirmed, your validator will be active and participating in the network.

3. Checking Validator Activeness

   Finally, to check whether your validator is active, you can run the following command:

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

   If the command returns something, your validator is in the active and is actively proposing and signing blocks.

   Only the top 100 validators in voting power are included in the active validator set. This means that even if you CreateValidator transaction passes, your validator might not be active until it has sufficient token delegations.

4. Running the Connect Oracle Sidecar

   Initia validators are also required to run the Connect Oracle Sidecar.

   Please refer to this section for further instructions.

   For more information on how to run the sidecar, please refer to the Skip Connect documentation.

Secure Your Validator Keys

Protecting and having a contingency backup plan for your keys will help mitigate catastrophic hardware or software failures of the node. It is a good practice to test your backup plan on a testnet node in case of node failure.

Also, always backup your validator node’s mnemonic and priv_validator_key.json somewhere safe and secure in case you ever need to recover your validator node on a new machine.