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›Validators

Welcome to Elrond

  • Welcome to Elrond

Technology

  • Architecture Overview
  • Glossary
  • Entities
  • Chronology
  • Secure Proof of Stake
  • Adaptive State Sharding
  • The Elrond WASM VM
  • Cross Shard Transactions

Wallet

  • Web Wallet
  • Maiar Web Wallet Extension
  • Webhooks
  • Ledger

Validators

  • Overview
  • System Requirements
  • Install a Mainnet Node

    • Scripts & User config
    • Installing a Validator Node
    • Optional Configurations
    • How to use the Docker Image

    Install a Testnet Node

    • Scripts & User config
    • Installing & updating
    • Manage your testnet node
    • How to use the Docker Image

    Install a Devnet Node

    • Scripts & User config
    • Installing & updating
    • Manage your devnet node
    • How to use the Docker Image

    Manage your keys

    • Validator Keys
    • Wallet Keys
    • Protecting your keys

    Staking, Unstaking, Unjailing

    • Staking, unstaking and unjailing
    • Staking
    • Unjailing
    • The Staking Smart Contract
  • The Delegation Manager
  • Convert An Existing Validator Into A Staking Pool
  • Merging A Validator Into An Existing Delegation Smart Contract
  • Rating
  • Node redundancy
  • Import DB
  • Node CLI
  • Node Databases
  • Useful Links & Tools
  • FAQs

Developers

    Tutorials

    • Build a dApp in 15 minutes
    • Build a Microservice for your dApp
    • The Crowdfunding Smart Contract (part 1)
    • The Crowdfunding Smart Contract (part 2)
    • The Counter Smart Contract

    Signing Transactions

    • Signing Transactions
    • Tools for signing
    • Signing programmatically

    Gas and Fees

    • Overview
    • EGLD transfers (move balance transactions)
    • System Smart Contracts
    • User-defined Smart Contracts

    Developer reference

    • The Elrond Serialization Format
    • Smart contract annotations
    • Smart contract modules
    • Smart contract to smart contract calls
    • Code Metadata
    • Smart Contract API Functions
    • Rust Testing Framework
    • Rust Testing Framework Functions Reference
    • Rust Smart Contract Debugging
    • Random Numbers in Smart Contracts

    Developers Best Practices

    • Basics
    • BigUint Operations
    • The dynamic allocation problem
    • Multi-values
    • Storage Mappers

    Mandos tests reference

    • Mandos Overview
    • Mandos Structure
    • Mandos Simple Values
    • Mandos Complex Values
    • Embedding Mandos code in Go
  • Constants
  • Built-In Functions
  • Account storage
  • ESDT tokens
  • NFT tokens
  • Setup a Local Testnet
  • Set up a Local Testnet (advanced)
  • Creating Wallets

SDK and Tools

    REST API

    • REST API overview
    • api.elrond.com
    • Gateway overview
    • Addresses
    • Transactions
    • Network
    • Nodes
    • Blocks
    • Virtual Machine
    • Versions and Changelog
  • Proxy
  • Elasticsearch
  • erdpy

    • erdpy
    • Installing erdpy
    • Configuring erdpy
    • erdpy CLI
    • Deriving the Wallet PEM file
    • Sending bulk transactions
    • Writing and running erdpy scripts
    • Smart contract interactions

    erdjs

    • erdjs
    • Cookbook
    • Extending erdjs
    • Writing and testing interactions
    • Migration guides
  • erdgo
  • erdjava
  • erdkotlin
  • erdwalletjs-cli

Integrators

  • EGLD integration guide
  • ESDT tokens integration guide
  • Observing Squad
  • Accounts Management
  • Creating Transactions
  • Querying the Blockchain

Overview

The Elrond network is made up of nodes and their interconnectivity - balanced by virtue of its design, secured through its size and fast, very fast, because efficiency is what motivated its development. Every time a node joins the network, it adds more security and efficiency. The network, in turn, rewards the nodes for their contribution, generating a virtuous cycle.

We will call a node any running instance of the software application developed by the Elrond team, publicly available as open source. Anyone can run a node on their machine - great care was taken to make the node consume as little computing resources as possible. Mid-level recent hardware can effortlessly run multiple individual nodes at the same time, earning more rewards for the same physical machine.

We will call a node operator any person or entity who manages one or more nodes. These pages are for them.

Background

Elrond is a decentralized blockchain network. This means that its nodes collaborate to create sequential blocks with strict regularity - blocks which contain the results of operations that were requested by the users of the network. Such operations may be simple transfers of tokens, or may be calls to SmartContracts. Either way, all operations take the form of transactions.

Any user who submits a transaction to the network must pay a fee, in EGLD tokens. These fees are what produces rewards for the nodes.

Note that not all nodes earn rewards from these fees. Only validator nodes qualify, because they are the nodes which are allowed to take part in consensus, to produce and validate blocks and to earn rewards.

Because of the influence they have in the network, validator nodes are required to have a stake, which is a significant amount of EGLD locked as collateral for the good behavior of the validator. Currently, the stake amount is set to 2500 EGLD. Nodes without a stake are called observer nodes - they don't participate in consensus and do not earn rewards, but they support the network in different ways.

If the validator consistently misbehaves or performs malicious actions, it will be fined accordingly and lose EGLD, an action known as stake slashing, and by also having its validator status removed. This form of punishment is reserved for serious offences.

Validator nodes each have an individual rating score, which expresses their overall reliability and responsiveness. Rating will increase for well-behaved nodes: every time a validator takes part in a successful consensus, its rating is increased.

The opposite is also true: a validator which is either offline during consensus or fails to contribute to the block being produced will be considered unreliable. And a consistently unreliable validator will see its rating drop.

Consensus selection probability is strongly influenced by a validators rating. The consensus process favors validators with high rating and will avoid selecting validators with low rating.

This implies that a node with high rating produces far more rewards than a node with low rating, so it is essential that operators maintain their validators online, up-to-date and responsive.

Moreover, if the rating of a validator becomes too low, it will be jailed. A jailed validator will not be selected for consensus - thus earning no rewards. To restore the validator, it must be unjailed, which requires a fine to be paid, currently set to 2.5 EGLD.

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