How to Become a Validator

This document explains the steps to become a validator on the Sunrise chain.

Prerequisites

Before operating a validator, you must set up a Full Consensus Node and be fully synchronized with the network.

Data Availability Verification

Setup Cosmovisor

For mainnet, it is strongly recommended to use Cosmovisor to run your node. Cosmovisor allows you to perform chain upgrades smoothly with minimal downtime.

Follow the Cosmovisor setup tutorial for details.

It is recommended to set the following environment variable to enable automatic upgrades:

export DAEMON_ALLOW_DOWNLOAD_BINARIES=true

Binary and Genesis File

When setting up a validator, it is crucial to use the correct version of the binary and genesis.json.

Binary: The latest binary can be downloaded from the GitHub releases.
Genesis File: The genesis.json file is located in the network repository.

Creating a Validator

There are two ways to create a validator: joining at genesis and joining after the chain has started.

Join as a Genesis Validator (Gentx)

To join as a validator before the network starts (as a genesis validator), you need to generate and submit a gentx (genesis transaction).

For detailed instructions, please refer to the README in the sunriselayer/network repository.

Join as a Validator After the Chain Has Started

If the chain is already running, you can create a validator with the following method.

`tx staking create-validator`

This is the standard Cosmos SDK method, which uses a validator.json file to create a validator. This method requires vRISE for self-delegation. This method requires vRISE for self-delegation.

Get the Validator’s Public Key

Run the sunrised tendermint show-validator command to get the validator’s public key (pubkey).
Terminal window
```
sunrised tendermint show-validator
```

Create the validator.json file

Create a validator.json file with the following content. Set the pubkey with the value obtained above.

{
    "pubkey": {"@type":"/cosmos.crypto.ed25519.PubKey","key":"oWg2ISpLF405Jcm2vXV+2v4fnjodh6aafuIdeoW+rUw="},
    "amount": "1000000uvrise",
    "moniker": "myvalidator",
    "identity": "optional identity signature (ex. UPort or Keybase)",
    "website": "validator's (optional) website",
    "security": "validator's (optional) security contact email",
    "details": "validator's (optional) details",
    "commission-rate": "0.1",
    "commission-max-rate": "0.2",
    "commission-max-change-rate": "0.01",
    "min-self-delegation": "1"
}

The amount is specified in uvrise.
The min-self-delegation is also the amount of vRISE.

Send the create-validator transaction

sunrised tx staking create-validator path/to/validator.json --from <keyname> --chain-id <chain-id> --gas="auto" --gas-prices=<gas-prices> -y

Usage:

sunrised tx staking create-validator [path/to/validator.json] [flags]

Backup

Backing up key files is crucial for validator operations. Please back up the following files to a secure location:

~/.sunrise/config/priv_validator_key.json
~/.sunrise/config/node_key.json

It is strongly recommended to encrypt these backup files.