How to set up a validator node? (Infrastructure)

Hardware Requirements for Validator Nodes

1. A minimum of 32 GB RAM is mandatory for stable operation during peak consensus rounds.

2. At least two NVMe SSDs configured in RAID 1 ensure redundancy and reduce block sync latency.

3. CPU must feature at least 8 physical cores with AVX-512 support to accelerate cryptographic verifications.

4. Network interface requires a dedicated 1 Gbps symmetric connection with sub-20ms global ping to major relay nodes.

5. Power supply must be backed by an uninterruptible source capable of sustaining 72 hours of continuous load.

Operating System and Kernel Configuration

1. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is the most widely tested distribution across Ethereum, Solana, and Cosmos validator deployments.

2. Kernel parameters such as net.core.somaxconn=65535 and vm.swappiness=1 are enforced to prevent memory thrashing.

3. SELinux or AppArmor profiles must be tuned to allow raw socket access and high-frequency IPC between execution and consensus clients.

4. Chrony is mandated over NTPd for sub-millisecond time synchronization, critical for slot-aligned attestations.

5. Filesystem mount options include noatime,nodiratime,commit=10 to minimize journaling overhead on SSDs.

Client Software Stack Deployment

1. Execution client (e.g., Geth or Erigon) and consensus client (e.g., Lighthouse or Teku) run in isolated containers using Podman, not Docker.

2. Inter-client communication occurs exclusively via Unix domain sockets bound to tmpfs-mounted paths.

3. Each client binary is compiled from source with -march=native -O3 -flto=full flags to exploit CPU-specific instruction sets.

4. Beacon node validator keys are stored offline in a YubiHSM 2 device; only public key material resides on the hot node.

5. Monitoring agents push metrics directly to Prometheus via pushgateway without intermediate brokers.

Security Hardening Measures

1. All inbound ports except 22 (SSH), 30303 (Ethereum P2P), and 9000 (Consensus UDP) are blocked by nftables with default-drop policy.

2. SSH access enforces FIDO2 hardware tokens and disables password authentication entirely.

3. Root filesystem is mounted read-only; runtime state is confined to a separate encrypted LUKS volume.

4. Kernel modules like nf_conntrack_ftp and snd_hda_intel are blacklisted to reduce attack surface.

5. Binary integrity is verified hourly using inotify-based checksum comparison against signed upstream manifests.

Network Topology and Redundancy Planning

1. Validator nodes operate behind a BGP-anycast prefix announced from at least three geographically dispersed data centers.

2. Outbound traffic flows through a dedicated WireGuard tunnel to a relay gateway running on hardened OpenBSD.

3. DNS resolution uses DNSSEC-validated stub resolver with fallback to Quad9’s 9.9.9.9 over DoH when upstream fails.

4. Peer discovery relies solely on static ENR entries retrieved from a private DHT seeded with known bootnodes.

5. Failover triggers within 1.8 seconds if primary node misses two consecutive proposal slots or attests below 92% accuracy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I run a validator node on cloud infrastructure like AWS EC2?A: Yes, but only on bare-metal instances such as i3.metal or m6i.metal. Virtualized environments introduce timing variance that violates slashing conditions.

Q: Is it safe to share RPC endpoints across multiple validator keys on one node?A: No. Each validator key must bind to its own isolated RPC port with TLS mutual authentication enforced at the reverse proxy layer.

Q: What happens if my node falls behind by more than 100 blocks?A: The consensus client automatically initiates fast sync via snapshots, but your validator will miss attestations until full sync completes and finality resumes.

Q: Do I need to store the entire history of the chain to validate?A: Not necessarily. State pruning modes like “light” or “archive” can be selected based on client capabilities, though archive mode is required for certain RPC methods used by explorers and indexers.