Staking Set-up
Last updated
Last updated
Creating accounts
We recommend creating two accounts, stash and controller, each with their own key:
The controller key is used to control staking actions and submitting transactions (paying for transaction fees).
The stash key is used to control most of your funds. It is recommended that the stash key be a cold wallet or offline and not be used for account-related activities like submitting extrinsics.
You can create the two accounts via the Explorer interface. The Kate network explorer is at https://goldberg.avail.tools/#/accounts, for other networks refer to the Avail Networks page.
Once you have created the accounts, Ensure each account has enough funds to pay the fees for making transactions. For validators participating in our testnet, contact the Avail team to have funds transferred.
STORING FUNDS
Keep most of your funds in the stash account since it is meant to be the custodian of your staking funds, and have just enough funds in the controller account to pay for fees.
Make sure not to bond all your AVL balance since you will be unable to pay transaction fees from your bonded balance.
It is now time to set up your validator by doing the following:
Bond the AVL of the Stash account. These token will be put at stake for the security of the network and subject to slashing.
Select the Controller. This is the account that will decide when to start or stop validating.
First, go to the accounts section on the Staking tab in the Explorer at https://goldberg.avail.tools for the Kate network (for other networks refer to the Avail Networks page). Here, you can perform various staking actions. Click on Stash.
The bonding preferences window will open with the following options:
Stash account: Your Stash account.
Controller account: Select your Controller account. This account only needs a small amount of AVL in order to start and stop validating.
Value bonded: The amount of AVL tokens you want to bond from your Stash account. You may stake any amount above the minimum.
Payment destination: The account where the rewards from validating are sent. More information can be found here.
TIP
You should not bond all of the AVL in that account, you will require some AVL for transactions. Also note that you can always bond more AVL later. However, withdrawing any bonded amount requires the duration of the unbonding period.
Once populating the fields you can click bond. You will then be promted to enter your wallet password. Enter your password and then click Sign and Submit.
You should now be ready to generate your session keys. Note the Session Key button, in the next step we will generate a key to submit here.
Once your node is fully synced, you need to rotate and submit your session keys.
Run this command on the machine where you are running your Avail validator node (while the node is running with the default HTTP RPC port configured):
The output will have a hex-encoded "result" field. The result is the concatenation of the four public keys. Save this result for a later step.
You should now restart the node so it will use the new session keys.
setKeys transactionYou need to tell the chain your Session keys by signing and submitting an extrinsic. This is what associates your validator with your Controller account.
Navigate back to the Network → Staking if you closed the window. Ensure you are on Account actions, and select Set Session Key on the bonding account you generated earlier. Enter the output from author_rotateKeys in the field and click on Set Session Key. Will be promted for password again.
After submitting this extrinsic, you will notice Set Session Key changed to Validate. Ensure your node is in sync before proceeding.
If you are ready to start validating you must click Validate
You will be prompted to enter your validator commission percentage. Once you click on Validate you will be prompted for your password.
Your validator is now ready to start validating. You can click the stop icon should you wish to exit. Note that the Avail interface does not check if your node is in sync. You need to ensure your node is in sync. The Avail blockchain will select your node in the next epoch or two if you have enough stake.
To verify that your node is ready for possible selection at the end of the next era , navigate to Network → Staking and select Waiting. Your account should be shown there. A new validator set is selected every era, based on the staking amount.
When the validator node has enough stake it will be elected, below is an example of the node being elected and making blocks.
