1. Creating A New Validator Wallet

You need to provide a local account name of your choice and provide a passphrase. When creating an account, the CLI will ask you to provide a passphrase to encrypt the keystore file: ./hmy keys add [LOCAL ACCOUNT NAME] --passphrase example :

./hmy keys add mylocalaccountname --passphrase

Backing Up Your Keystore File (Optional)

./hmy keys location

The command above will return the location of your account keystore. You may want to create a backup of this file.‌

You can check the list of wallets (local accounts) with the following command:

./hmy keys list

Example output from above command:

#NAME                                  ADDRESS
example-account1                      one1wh4p0kuc7unxez2z8f82zfnhsg4ty6dupqyjt2

Checking your account balance

If you are running a node and your node is synced to the latest block, use the following command to check your balance : ./hmy balances [ONE ADDRESS]. Ex:

./hmy balances one1u6c4wer2dkm767hmjeehnwu6tqqur62gx9vqsd

If you are not running a node or your node is not synced, use the following command to check your balance : ./hmy --node="[API_endpoint]" balances [ONE ADDRESS] ex:

./hmy --node="https://api.s0.t.hmny.io" balances one1u6c4wer2dkm767hmjeehnwu6tqqur62gx9vqsd

./hmy --node="https://api.s0.b.hmny.io" balances one1u6c4wer2dkm767hmjeehnwu6tqqur62gx9vqsd

2. Creating a Validator

Replace everything in [ ] with your own data:

./hmy --node="https://api.s0.t.hmny.io" staking create-validator \
    --validator-addr [ONE ADDRESS] --amount 10000 \
    --bls-pubkeys [BLS PUBLIC KEY1],[BLS PUBLIC KEY2] \
    --name "[NAME]" --identity "[IDENTITY]" --details "DETAILS" \
    --security-contact "CONTACT" --website "YOUR-WEBSITE.COM" \
    --max-change-rate 0.1 --max-rate 0.1 --rate 0.1 \
    --max-total-delegation 100000000 --min-self-delegation 10000 --passphrase

./hmy --node="https://api.s0.b.hmny.io" staking create-validator \
    --validator-addr [ONE ADDRESS] --amount 10000 \
    --bls-pubkeys [BLS PUBLIC KEY1],[BLS PUBLIC KEY2] \
    --name "[NAME]" --identity "[IDENTITY]" --details "DETAILS" \
    --security-contact "CONTACT" --website "YOUR-WEBSITE.COM" \
    --max-change-rate 0.1 --max-rate 0.1 --rate 0.1 \
    --max-total-delegation 100000000 --min-self-delegation 10000 --passphrase

The CLI will prompt you to enter your BLS key file password.

--validator-addr is the validator ONE address (string)

--amount is the initial amount of ONE you want to stake (float)

--bls-pubkeys takes a comma-separated list of BLS public keys (string)

--name will be the name displayed on the Staking Explorer (string)

--identity unique identifier for the validator (string)

--details is the description of the validator (string)

--security-contact is security contact for the validator (string)

--website will be the website displayed on the Staking Explorer (string)

--max-change-rate is the maximum rate change the validator can do to their commission rate every epoch (float)

--max-rate is the maximum commission rate that the validator can set (float)

--rate is the commission rate of the validator (float)

--max-total-delegation is the maximum amount of ONE that can be delegated to this validator (float)

--min-self-delegation is the minimum amount of ONE the validator must stake to itself (float)

When does the validator participate in election?

A new validator will be eligible for the election for next epoch. You can see the time until the next epoch on the Staking Dashboard.

Once your validator is elected, the validator will receive rewards and you will be able to see "BINGO" in the logs.

tail -n 1000 latest/zerolog-validator-*.log | grep -i BINGO

Example output:

{"level":"info","port":"9000","ip":"213.136.79.89","blockNum":3916,"epochNum":26,"ViewId":3916,"blockHash":"0xca71fc9aa92f694f664aa34d7e3e82cf9b678e3a062d3bbbabebfbc5f0598d84","numTxns":0,"numStakingTxns":0,"caller":"/mnt/jenkins/workspace/harmony-release/harmony/node/node_handler.go:359","time":"2019-12-11T14:49:08.983338784+01:00","message":"BINGO !!! Reached Consensus"}