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Becoming a validator

The Shibarium network leverages a consolidated Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm where the Shib community can actively participate and build together.

You can help the Shib community thrive and also gain rewards by becoming a validator. By meeting some general requirements and having the necessary technical apparatus, node operators play the crucial role of validating transactions and helping build the blocks of the Shibarium blockchain.

It is important to notice that validators should always be aware of their nodes health and be ready to dedicate to their maintenance as every single node is important to guarantee the network efficiency.

As a validator, you are also expected to:

  • Verify transactions legitimacy

  • Help achieve consensus in the network

  • Keep Shibarium safe and sound

You can also find more validators' duties on the Validator Responsibilities page.

Rewards​

Whenever a checkpoint is submitted to Ethereum, the network grants a dynamic given amount of BONE for its participants, that is, the proposer, the validator and the delegators.

If we consider the reward as 50 BONE, 10% of this reward (5 BONE) goes to the proposer and the remaining 45 BONE is divided on the basis of the staking amount of delegators and validators. With an average of 12-13 checkpoints daily, the yearly rewards tend to reach around 584000 BONE (checkpoint reward).

To estimate an expected reward per staked bone, we divide the quantity of staked BONE (network state) by the checkpoint reward. If, for instance, we have 22889480 as the current network state, then the expected reward per staked bone would equal 584000 divided by 22889480. This would result in 0.0255139042 rewarded BONE per staked BONE.

Validators also collect the fees for each transaction. The standard value for this transaction fee is 0.00334, but it changes according to the transaction. The total rewards a validator can receive are the sum of checkpoint rewards and the transaction fees.

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You can check the current rewards for checkpoints sent on the contract.

Steps to become a validator​

  1. Get Whitelisted

    Go to the Become a validator page. Connect your wallet and you will have access to a form where you can apply to join the Shibarium network as a validator.

  2. Check the technical requirements

    Make sure you have the recommended system requirements to run a validator node.

  3. Set up a node

    First, check these technical prerequisites. Then follow the instructions on the Ansible tutorial.

  4. Fill the Validator info page with information about your organization

    Create a name and an icon and provide a Staker address to the system. All fields are mandatory.

  5. Stake BONE tokens

    In order to join the Shibarium network and collect rewards, all validators need to stake a minimum quantity of 10,000 BONE.

Staking via smart contracts​

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Using the UI to stake the amount of 10,000 BONE is the easiest and recommended way of joining the network. You can however perform the staking leveraging the deployed smart contracts.

To stake via smart contracts, you will utilize the stakeFor method from the StakeManagerProxy contract.

The stakeFor method requires the following parameters:

  • user (address): the address of the user who staking BONE
  • amount (uint256): how much will be staked
  • heimdallFee (uint256): a dynamic fee, chosen by the user
  • acceptDelegation (bool): check whether the validator will accept delegation
  • signerPubkey (bytes): the signer public key

Before you can use this method, you have to run the Approve method from the BONE contract. There you will send the StakeManagerProxy contract address and the amount of BONE you want to approve, which should be a bit more than 10,000 BONE.

Finally, you can access the validator set page to check if you're part of the validators network.

Important requirements​

Aside from following the steps above, validators need to:

  • Maintain the node

  • Have ETH balance in your signer address to sign checkpoints

  • Get updated with our latest releases.

Technical requirements​

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The system requirements listed in this section are both for the Sentry node and the Validator node.

You must always run the sentry node and the validator node on separate machines.

Minimum system requirements​

The minimum system requirements mean you can run the nodes but the setup is not future-proof.

  • RAM: 32 GB

  • CPU: 8-core

  • Storage: 500 GB SSD

For Amazon Web Services (AWS), the equivalent of the minimum requirements instances are, with unlimited credits selected:

  • For Sentry: c5.2xlarge

  • For Validator node: c5.4xlarge

The recommended system requirements mean the nodes are future-proof. There is, however, no upper limit to future-proofing your nodes.

  • RAM: 64 GB

  • CPU: 16-core

  • Storage: 5 TB SSD

  • Bandwidth: 1 Gbit/s

For Amazon Web Services (AWS), the equivalent of the recommended requirements instance is m5d.4xlarge.

  • For OVH, the equivalent of the recommended requirements instance is infra-3.

  • For the network, expect 3-5 TB of data transferred per month.