💾Become a Validator

Help contribute to the security of SX Network by running your own validator node. In addition to your contribution to our network, you'll gain earn rewards paid out in the betting currencies on SX.bet. Moreover, if you allow delegation and charge commission, you will earn additional fees. To get started, apply at https://sx.bet/stakingV2/start

Have questions? Send an e-mail to [e-mail]

Requirements

• 200,000 SX owned in an account, plus additional amounts to pay for gas for transactions

• CPU: Equivalent of 2 vCPUs

• RAM: 4 GB

• Storage: 200 GB

• Network: 1 gigabit up/down or better

• OS: Ubuntu 18.04/20.04, Debian 10/11, or Amazon Linux 2

• Firewall rules configured to allow public access (inbound and outbound) on port 10001 (libp2p). This is the port used to communicate with other nodes in the network.

• Agree to aim for 99.9% uptime

Responsibilities

• Must aim for 99.99% up-time, anything less than 50% will likely get you voted off.

• Keep up with latest versions and be available on Discord/Telegram in upgrades are required to your node

Cloud-specific recommendations

Below we list some recommendations of instance types on popular cloud providers to ensure you meet the above requirements.

Cloud provider	Type
AWS	t3.medium or better
Google Cloud	e2-medium or better
Microsoft Azure	Standard_B2s or better ​

Technical step-by-step guide

Our team has tried to ensure that the set up process to run your own validator is as simple as possible. Please follow the steps below to get started:

1. Configure cloud instance

1. On your cloud platform of preference, create a compute instance according to theRequirements section above and SSH into your instance.
2. Install git:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git

2. Account generation

Copy + Paste the line below in your home directory to initialize your validator account as part of the network:

git clone https://github.com/sx-network/validator.git && cd validator && chmod +x init_validator.sh && ./init_validator.sh "$(curl http://checkip.amazonaws.com)" main

This script will create a new key-pair for you. Safely store the private key and address and proceed to fund your new account with 200,000 SX.

DO NOT share your private key with anyone and keep it in a safe place. Ensure you back this up as well

3. Running your validator

At this point, active validator operators will "vote in" your address as a new validator to the set and you will be notified via e-mail. When you are ready to run your node, copy + paste the line below to start to start your validator:

cd ~/validator && chmod +x start_validator.sh && ./start_validator.sh "$(curl http://checkip.amazonaws.com)"

Viewing log output

At any point after starting up your validator, you can view its log output by entering the following line:

sudo journalctl -u sx-node -f

Once your address has been successfully added to the validator set, you should see recurring AcceptState entries similar to what can be seen below:

polygon.consensus.ibft.acceptState: Accept state: sequence=4509667

4. Validator maintenance

Validator operators have the responsibility of ensuring their nodes perform well, have a high up-time, and are running the latest version of our blockchain software.

Visit our maintenance page for links and technical how-tos that you'll find helpful to run and maintain a successful validator.