When it comes to becoming and maintaining your status as a validator on the Polygon (MATIC) network, a lot of people might run into issues or simply have questions as to how all of it works, how they can reserve spots, what the different states of validators are, and how the system works as a whole.
To clear things up a bit, today, we are going to go over some of the most popular questions regarding Matic validators and answer them for you, so you can have an easier time the next time you decide to pursue this path.
Key Points:
- There are numerous questions that a lot of Matic validator nodes might have either prior to beginning their node or after they have launched.
- Knowing what kind of issues they can run into and how they can resolve them can aid them in a successful node uptime and help them reap the rewards.
- We have gone over some of the most popular questions as a means of giving each Matic Validator as much information as possible, so they do not get stuck at any point throughout the overall operation.
- NOWNodes allows anyone to connect to a MATIC node with ease through the usage of a free API key.
- How Can a User Reserve a Validator Spot?
If there is a vacant validator slot available at the time of the request, anyone with any amount has the ability to stake and can become a validator within the Polygon (MATIC) system. However, there will be validator auctions organized periodically, where anyone can replace a current validator by proposing a higher stake. This is an open system where places cannot be reserved for anyone.
2. What kind of states can a validator be in?
A validator can be in a total of three states. First, there is the active state, where the validator produces a block at the Bor layer and participates in the Heimdall consensus whilst committing checkpoint transactions to the Ethereum mainnet. Then there’s the Notice state, where the validator sends a transaction to unbond. Then there’s the unbending state, where the validator is inactive in this state and earns no rewards.
3. How many MATIC tokens are required to be staked in order for someone to become a validator?
The minimum number of MATIC required to be staked as a means of becoming a validator is just 1 MATIC token. Over time, however, the average or median stake by a validator will trend upwards and become more substantial; 1 MATIC is just the default value that was required at launch.
4. Can anyone participate in the staking process, even if they do not want to run a node?
Any MATIC token holders that do not want to run their own node are given the opportunity to simply delegate their tokens to an already existing validator. The delegation procedure increases the power of the chosen validator, and the more power they have, the higher the probability becomes for that validator to become the block producer and checkpoint proposer. There is no minimum amount required for delegation.
5. Can a new validator replace an existing validator?
There is limited space when it comes to the acceptance of new validators. What this means is that new validators can only join the active set, only at the point in time when a currently active validator ends up unbounding. As such, a new auction process for validator replacement will be rolled out.
6. If “Failed Sanity Checks” appear in Heimdall, what does this mean?
There are Addressbook warnings, which can be ignored without an issue most of the time. However, if your node is connected to a sufficient number of peers, these kinds of errors can also be ignored. Your pex is just aiming to re-establish a connection with peers who are already present within the addrbook.json.
7. Can Bor be started prior to the Heimdall synchronization completion?
You, unfortunately cannot start Bor before Heimdall completely synchronizes. If you end up attempting to start Bor without letting Heimdall completely sync, in that case, you will face issues on your Bor, which would otherwise not be there, assuming you had just left it to sync completely.
8. Why would validator Heimdall be unable to connect to peers?
What this means, most of the time is that your sentry Heimdall is running into issues. In cases such as these, you will need to check your sentry Heimdall as a means of figuring out if the service is running fine. If it has stopped, you might need to restart the service on your sentry as a means of resolving this issue. After it has been fixed, restart your Heimdall service to also resolve any additional issues which might have occurred.
9. How do you check if Heimdall is synched?
In order for you to be able to check and know if Heimdall is indeed synchronized, you will need to run a command as a means of checking its status.
The command is as follows:
- curl http://localhost:26657/status
You can then check the value of catching_up, where, if it is false, then the node is not all synched up yet.
10. What does the Heimdall “dpkg: error processing archive” error indicate?
If Heimdall shows “dpkg: error processing archive” error, this is an error that occurs and is prompted by the previous installation of Polygon on your machine. In order to resolve this issue, you will need to run the following command:
- sudo dpkg -r matic-node
After this command, your issue will be resolved.
NOWNodes is a blockchain-as-a-service that will let you easily connect to a MATIC node with ease at any point in time when you require blockchain data.
All you have to do in order to get started is navigate to the official NOWNodes website, after which you will be able to enter your email address and receive an API key. Then, just navigate to the documentation to learn how you can easily connect.
Conclusion
With all of the aforementioned information in mind, you now have a heightened perspective, as well as a heightened level of understanding when it comes to running a Polygon (MATIC) validator node. From some of the most asked questions to some of the most commonly encountered issues, the next time you run into anything, you will now have the knowledge required to resolve anything.
