Validating on Edgeware (CLI)

Welcome to the official, in-depth Edgeware guide to validating. We're happy that you're interested in validating on Edgeware and we'll do our best to provide in-depth documentation on the process below. As always, reach out on Discord or Telegram if you have questions about the project.

This document contains all the information one should need to start validating on Edgeware using the command line interface. We will start with how to setup one's node and proceed to how to key management and monitoring. To start, we will use the following terminology of keys for the guide:

  • stash - the stash keypair is where most of your funds should be located. It can be kept in cold storage if necessary.
  • controller - the controller is the keypair that will control your validator settings. It should have a smaller balance, e.g. 10-100 EDG
  • session - the 3 session keypairs are hot keys that are stored on your validator node. They do not need to have balances.

Requirements

  1. You will need 5 keypairs: a stash (ed25519 or sr25519), controller (ed25519 or sr25519), and 3 session (only ed25519) keypairs. You can generate these using the subkey utility. We will be using derived keys in the examples, if you do not use derived keys, simply input the seed/mnemonic needed to sign from these accounts.
  2. You will need at least the existential balance (1,000,000,000,000,000 token units i.e 0.0001 EDG) in both the stash and controller accounts plus the balances needed to send transactions from these accounts.
  3. You will need a live, fully-synced Edgeware node running with the --validator flag that has set one's session keys, either before or after you complete the onboarding process.

Pre-requisites

  • First follow the guide in the README.md for installing and running the edgeware-node.
  • Download from source or from the npm registry the edgeware-cli located here. Note: edgeware-cli has several dependencies viewable here.

  • Install subkey as well if you do need to generate new keypairs:

    cargo install --force --git https://github.com/paritytech/substrate subkey

From this point on, we will assume you are familiar with using subkey, if that is not the case, you can read about the subkey commands here.

Onboarding

  1. First, create the stash and controller keypairs using subkey. You can also optionally **create your 3 session keys. Ensure all 3 session keys are ED25519 keypairs, using -e flag with subkey.
  2. Next, you will need to bond from your stash keypair to your controller keypair. Using the CLI, you will run:
/bin/edge -r edgeware -s <STASH_SEED> staking bond <CONTROLLER_B58_ADDRESS> <AMOUNT> <REWARD_DESTINATION>
  • The stash seed should be a mnemonic + derivation path for your stash keypair
  • The controller address should be a Base58 encoded public key (starts with a 5)
  • The bond amount should be an integer balance
  • The reward destination is where rewards will go; the options are stash, controller, and staked (where staked adds rewards to the amount staked)
  • Next, you will need to set your validator preferences from your controller account. Using the CLI, you will run:
/bin/edge -r edgeware -s <CONTROLLER_SEED> staking validate <UNSTAKE_THRESHOLD> <VALIDATOR_PAYMENT>
  • The controller seed should be a mnemonic + derivation path for your controller keypair
  • The unstake threshold is the number of times your node is offline before dropping out
  • The validator payment is the reward the validator takes up front as an integer balance
  • Next, you will need to set your session keys from your controller keypair. Using the CLI, you will run:
/bin/edge -r edgeware -s <CONTROLLER_SEED> session setKeys <SESSION_PUBLIC_KEY1>,<SESSION_PUBLIC_KEY2>,<SESSION_PUBLIC_KEY3>
  • The controller seed should be a mnemonic + derivation path for your controller keypair
  • The session public keys should be comma separated, and hex-encoded public keys

Examples of all the commands are below:

In the following, we have downloaded and compiled edgeware-cli from source to yield a /bin/edge binary. You can use tsc to do so if you compile from source.

/bin/edge -r edgeware -s "eager exit major position method auction duck fix journey supply mad caught"//stash staking bond 5HmGM2dKGbZNQYBLgTepEmv9Ynbc6Mep8L4B8ZiUtpcqPhn7 500 stash
/bin/edge -r edgeware -s "eager exit major position method auction duck fix journey supply mad caught"//controller staking validate 3 0
/bin/edge -r edgeware -s "eager exit major position method auction duck fix journey supply mad caught"//controller session setKeys 0xa29aed52530899b4fbc14772cfb9b06284509b8733bfa8d8bf3e09db4a108bb2,0xe8987d80ee5a8a239dd33eabfee6b5bb287264f0a32ce6ef13ccfedf598b98718d8bf3e09db4a108bb2,0x6ed5ac9bf1388dd38c9e271f8e49e4691de2bf174990c7d37b637b46d5b6763b

Validating

Now you will need to install the edgeware-node to start validating with the keys you have generated above. If you followed the first step of the pre-requisites you should be able to build the node as is described below and in the repo.

  1. Once you build with cargo build --release, run your node with ./target/release/edgeware --chain=edgeware --validator
  2. Now that the chain is running, you will need to pass the chain your session keys. To do so, you will need to use the following curl commands to send the node your keys.

If you already have session keys:

For example, if you were selected to participate as a validator from the Edgeware Lockdrop, you will likely want to input the keys you have generated to your node's keystore. Or if you have a generated a set of keys previously that you want to use for validating, these commands will guide you through that process.

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{ "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"author_insertKey", "params":["aura", "SESSION_KEY_SEED", "<public_key>"],"id":1 }' localhost:9933
curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{ "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"author_insertKey", "params":["gran", "SESSION_KEY_SEED", "<public_key>"],"id":1 }' localhost:9933
curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{ "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"author_insertKey", "params":["imon", "SESSION_KEY_SEED", "<public_key>"],"id":1 }' localhost:9933

You will need to pass in the respective public key for the aura and imon because it can work for both SR25519 and ED25519 keys and needs the public key to decide. Note: Edgeware uses ED25519 keys for Aura, Grandpa, and Im_Online.

If you don't already have session keys

If you don't have a set of session keys, the following curl command will create N pairs for you where N=3 for the Edgeware network. This is because session participants maintain a key for the Aura, Grandpa, and Im_Online modules.

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{ "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"author_rotateKeys", "id":1 }' localhost:9933

After running these curl commands, you should receive as output from stdout the public keys you provided (or didn't) in a JSON string. That also means the process was a success! You should now see yourself in the list of newly/pending validators to go into effect in future sessions. In the next era (up to 1 hour), if there is a slot available, your node will become an active validator.