Run a validator

Validators produce blocks, vote on finality, and receive 100 % of transaction fees plus a share of inflation rewards. The slot-leader rotation is deterministic — every validator gets a turn.

Hardware sizing

Observed RSS plateau at ~290 MB per node across 4-h soaks at 10 TPS sustained + 5 K-50 K bursts. Scales sub-linearly with chain size on disk.

Becoming a validator

1 · Generate the validator key

./shardo-wallet --key-file validator.key keygen
./shardo-wallet --key-file validator.key pubkey
# → 0x59243b8c77659b8d...

2 · Stake the minimum

./shardo-wallet --key-file validator.key \
    --rpc-url http://your-node:8547 --chain-id 590 \
    stake 100000 --wait

3 · Apply to join the active set

./shardo-wallet --key-file validator.key \
    validator-apply \
        --pubkey 0xYOUR_VALIDATOR_PUBKEY \
        --stake 100000 \
        --wait
# → application TX hash

4 · Wait for governance vote

Existing validators must approve. Once 2f+1 approvals land, you're activated at the next epoch transition (~30 min on mainnet).

5 · Boot the node

./shardo-node \
    --network testnet \
    --validator \
    --validator-key /path/to/validator.key \
    --genesis /path/to/genesis-testnet.json \
    --data-dir /var/lib/shardochain \
    --external-ip YOUR_PUBLIC_IP \
    --p2p-port 30303 \
    --bootstrap "/ip4/51.178.27.105/udp/30303/quic-v1/p2p/12D3KooW..." \
    --log-level info

systemd unit

[Unit]
Description=ShardoChain Validator Node
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=shardochain
WorkingDirectory=/opt/shardochain
ExecStart=/opt/shardochain/shardo-node \
    --network testnet \
    --validator \
    --validator-key /opt/shardochain/keys/validator.key \
    --genesis /opt/shardochain/config/genesis.json \
    --data-dir /var/lib/shardochain \
    --external-ip YOUR_IP \
    --p2p-port 30303 \
    --log-level info
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
LimitNOFILE=65535

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Monitoring

The Prometheus metrics endpoint is on :9100. Key gauges to alert on:

• shardochain_block_height — local tip. Stalls indicate a sync or consensus issue.
• shardochain_best_peer_height — highest peer tip. peer - local > 50 → behind.
• shardochain_slots_since_last_produced — alert at > 30 (you missed a turn).
• shardochain_poh_clock_skew_slots — alert at abs() > 10 sustained 30 s.
• shardochain_forks_detected — non-zero rate is news.
• shardochain_block_import_state_root_mismatch — should be 0 always; non-zero means execution divergence.

Slashing

• Equivocation (signing two blocks at the same slot/height): −5 % of stake. Caught automatically by the vote_guard + on-chain evidence.
• Downtime (consecutive offline epochs): per-permille slash, capped at 5 %.
• Jail after 3 consecutive offline epochs. Auto-removal at 7. Unjail cooldown 10 epochs.

Rewards

• 100 % of fees on the blocks you produce.
• Pro-rata share of inflation (400 M SHARD over 10 years, linear) by stake (own + delegated).
• Distributed every reward epoch (43 200 blocks ≈ 10 h on mainnet).
• Claim via claim-rewards wallet command.
• Jailed validators do not accumulate rewards.

Cross-DC operations (observed)

The current testnet runs N=7 across 4 OVH datacenters with cross-DC RTT 30-80 ms. Documented behaviour:

• 0 nodes offline → 1.43 b/s (theoretical max)
• 1 node offline → ~1 b/s sustained
• 2 nodes offline (28 %) → ~1 b/s sustained, chain still finalizing
• Restart 1 node mid-production → block produced immediately post-restart (vote_registry.bin restored)
• Add validator (N=5 → N=7) → ~12 min from foundation TX to active set