Intermediate
How to Create A Validator
This tutorial covers the steps for creating a Validator Wallet and creating a Validator on the Harmony blockchain using the Harmony CLI. You will need to provide a local account name, passphrase, and BLS public keys. The balance in the Validator Wallet must have at least 10001 ONE tokens to cover the creation fee. You also need to provide details such as name, identity, details, security contact, and website. The rate, max-rate, max-change-rate, max-total-delegation, and min-self-delegation must also be specified. The tutorial covers the steps to check the balance, backup the keystore file, and the format of the create-validator command.
Before we proceed, we need to create a new Validator Wallet which will need to be funded with 10001 ONE
Creating A New Validator Wallet
You need to provide a local account name of your choice and provide a passphrase. When creating an account, the CLI will ask you to provide a passphrase to encrypt the keystore file: ./hmy keys add [LOCAL ACCOUNT NAME] –passphrase example :
./hmy keys add mylocalaccountname --passphrase
Remember your passphrase. You will need it to decrypt the account keystore in order to send transactions & perform other actions.
Also save your seed phrase (mnemonic) somewhere as well, in case you lose your keystore.
Backing Up Your Keystore File (Optional)
./hmy keys location
The command above will return the location of your account keystore. You may want to create a backup of this file.
You can check the list of wallets (local accounts) with the following command:
./hmy keys list
Example output from above command:
#NAME ADDRESS example-account1 one1wh4p0kuc7unxez2z8f82zfnhsg4ty6dupqyjt2
Checking Account Balance
Use the following command to check your balance : ./hmy –node=”[API_endpoint]” balances [ONE ADDRESS] ex:
Mainnet/Testnet
./hmy --node="https://api.s0.t.hmny.io" balances one1u6c4wer2dkm767hmjeehnwu6tqqur62gx9vqsd
Creating a Validator
For you to create a Validator successfully, it needs to have 10000 ONE tokens plus the necessary fees to create the validator transaction on chain. For this reason, we recommend that you send at least 10001 ONE tokens to your --validator-addr
before you continue.
For Testnet tokens, check here.
Replace everything in [ ] with your own data:
Mainnet/Testnet
./hmy --node="https://api.s0.t.hmny.io" staking create-validator \ --validator-addr [ONE ADDRESS] --amount 10000 \ --bls-pubkeys [BLS PUBLIC KEY1],[BLS PUBLIC KEY2] \ --name "[NAME]" --identity "[IDENTITY]" --details "DETAILS" \ --security-contact "CONTACT" --website "YOUR-WEBSITE.COM" \ --max-change-rate 0.1 --max-rate 0.1 --rate 0.1 \ --max-total-delegation 100000000 --min-self-delegation 10000 --passphrase
Copy the entire command. Extra white spaces in the command could cause errors.
Name, identity, details, security-contact and website need to be put in double quotes if there are more than one word separated by space (example –name “John the validator”).
The CLI will prompt you to enter your BLS key file password.
--validator-addr
is the validator ONE address (string)
--amount
is the initial amount of ONE you want to stake (float)
--bls-pubkeys
takes a comma-separated list of BLS public keys (string)
--name
will be the name displayed on the Staking Explorer (string)
--identity
unique identifier for the validator (string)
--details
is the description of the validator (string)
--security-contact
is security contact for the validator (string)
--website
will be the website displayed on the Staking Explorer (string)
--max-change-rate
is the maximum rate change the validator can do to their commission rate every epoch (float)
--max-rate
is the maximum commission rate that the validator can set (float)
--rate
is the commission rate of the validator (float)
--max-total-delegation
is the maximum amount of ONE that can be delegated to this validator (float)
--min-self-delegation
is the minimum amount of ONE the validator must stake to itself (float)
--max-rate
and --max-change-rate
cannot be changed later.
--min-self-delegation
has to be at least 10,000 ONE.
--rate
, --max-rate
, and --max-change-rate
accepts numbers between 0 and 1 representing percentages
If you have a Keybase account, we recommend you use your Keybase public key fingerprint as your validator’s identity. The field is unique, ensuring that other validator’s can not attempt to impersonate you. This data will also help with some awesome integrations & features in the future!