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Create a Core Validator

Once your account is funded, you can run various commands inside your Hedge Node Docker container to stake and start validating.

Confirm Node Synchronization​

Verify that your node has finished synching and it is caught up with the network

# Wait until you see the output: "false"
hedged status 2>&1 | jq .SyncInfo.catching_up

Verify Account Funds​

Verify that your account has funds in it in order to perform staking

# Make sure you can see your account name in the keys list
hedged  keys list

# Make sure you see your account has HDE tokens in it
hedged query bank balances $(hedged keys show -a <key_name>)

Backup Validator's Consensus Key​

A validator participates in the consensus by sending a message signed by a consensus key which is automatically generated when you first run a node. You must create a backup of this consensus key in case that you migrate your validator to another server or accidentally lose access to your validator.

A consensus key is stored as a json file in $hedged_home_folder/config/priv_validator_key.json by default, or a custom path specified in the parameter priv_validator_key_file of config.toml.

Stake and Start Validating​

Ensure you have a small amount of HDE tokens on the wallet address you are using on your keyring in order to successfully send a transaction. Once you have have a balance on the address on your keyring, you can now send the create-validator transaction.

Here is the empty command:

hedged tx staking create-validator \
--from=<key_name> \
--amount=<staking_amount_uhedge> \
--pubkey=$(hedged tendermint show-validator --home ./hedge/berberis-1) \
--moniker="<moniker_id_of_your_node>" \
--security-contact="<security contact email/contact method>" \
--chain-id=<chain_id> \
--commission-rate="<commission_rate>" \
--commission-max-rate="<maximum_commission_rate>" \
--commission-max-change-rate="<maximum_rate_of_change_of_commission>" \
--min-self-delegation="<min_self_delegation_amount>" \
--gas=auto \
--gas-adjustment=<gas_adjustment> \
--gas-prices="<gas_price>" \
--node-id=$(curl localhost:26657/status| jq -r .result.node_info.id)

Here's an example with values which starts with a stake of 1000000000uhedge.

hedged tx staking create-validator \
--from=wallet \
--amount=1000000000uhedge \
--pubkey=$(hedged tendermint show-validator --home ./hedge/berberis-1) \
--moniker="new_validator" \
--security-contact="validator_mail@yourdomain.com" \
--chain-id=berberis-1 \
--commission-rate="0.10" \
--commission-max-rate="0.20" \
--commission-max-change-rate="0.01" \
--min-self-delegation=1 \
--gas=auto \
--gas-adjustment=1.5 \
--gas-prices="0.025uhedge" \
--node-id=$(curl localhost:26657/status| jq -r .result.node_info.id)
  • from is the key_name you created when initializing the key on your keyring
  • amount is the amount of tokens to be bonded
  • pubkey is the validator public key found earlier
  • moniker is a human readable name you choose for your validator
  • chain-id is whatever chain-id you are working with (in the hedge testnet case it is berberis-1)
  • commission-rate is the commission rate on block rewards and fees charged to delegators
  • commission-max-rate is the maximum commission rate that this validator can charge. This parameter is fixed and cannot be changed after the validator is created
  • commission-max-change-rate is the maximum daily increase of the validator commission rate. This parameter is fixed cannot be changed after the validator is created(in the example above, 1 percent per day until reaching the max rate)
  • min-self-delegation is the minimum amount of HDE the validator requires to have bonded at all time. If the validator's self-delegated stake falls below this limit, the validator gets jailed and kicked out of the active validator set
  • gas-prices is the amount of gas used to send this create-validator transaction
  • 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

The terminal will ask you to confirm the transaction:

gas estimate: 234463
auth_info:
fee:
    amount:
    - amount: "5862"
    denom: uhedge
    gas_limit: "234463"
    granter: ""
    payer: ""
signer_infos: []
tip: null
body:
extension_options: []
memo: ""
messages:
- '@type': /cosmos.staking.v1beta1.MsgCreateValidator
    commission:
    max_change_rate: "0.010000000000000000"
    max_rate: "0.200000000000000000"
    rate: "0.100000000000000000"
    delegator_address: hedge14ryuk7c3ul894cqfekfzawlm928cvh4emek5m0
    description:
    details: ""
    identity: ""
    moniker: new_validator
    security_contact: validator_mail@yourdomain.com
    website: ""
    min_self_delegation: "1"
    pubkey:
    '@type': /cosmos.crypto.ed25519.PubKey
    key: ghjWS2G3csB0W7Bj83uAsRUVBUuey328nUY9430YhYg=
    validator_address: hedgevaloper14ryuk7c3ul894cqfekfzawlm928cvh4ehsxq7d
    value:
    amount: "999990000"
    denom: uhedge
non_critical_extension_options: []
timeout_height: "0"
signatures: []
confirm transaction before signing and broadcasting [y/N]: y

Type y and press Enter to confirm.

code: 0
codespace: ""
data: ""
events: []
gas_used: "0"
gas_wanted: "0"
height: "0"
info: ""
logs: []
raw_log: '[]'
timestamp: ""
tx: null
txhash: 7C1D69F6BE1A1836452F95D6CB0D695EA878D2AE22EA0CE7AFBB1CAE6934673D

Once you have finished running the command above, if you see code: 0 in the output, the command was successful.