Validator overview
Introduction
OKTC is based on Tendermint, which relies on a set of validators that are responsible for committing new blocks in the blockchain. These validators participate in the consensus protocol by broadcasting votes which contain cryptographic signatures signed by each validator’s private key.
Validator candidates can bond their own OKTs and have OKTs "delegated", or staked, to them by token holders. The OKTC network will have 21 validators. The validators are determined by a ranking of those who collected the highest number of staked OKTs— the top 21 validator candidates with the largest stakes will become OKTC validators.
Validators will earn OKTs as block provisions and tokens as transaction fees through execution of the Tendermint consensus protocol and delegators should get rewards from their target validators in their own ways. Initially, transaction fees will be paid in okts but in the future, any token in the OKTC ecosystem will be valid as fee tender if it is whitelisted by governance. Note that validators can set commission on the fees their delegators receive as additional incentive.
Hardware
There currently exists no appropriate cloud solution for validator key management. This may change when cloud SGX becomes more widely available. For this reason, validators must set up a physical operation secured with restricted access. A good starting place, for example, would be co-locating in secure data centers.
Validators should expect to equip their datacenter with redundant power, connectivity, and storage backups. Having several redundant networking boxes for fiber, firewall and switching is recommended, as well as small servers with redundant hard drive and failover.
We anticipate that network requirements will be low initially. The current testnet requires minimal resources. Bandwidth, CPU and memory requirements will rise as the network grows. Large hard drives are recommended for storing complete blockchain histories.
Set up a website
Set up a dedicated validator website and signal your intention to become a validator. This is an important point since delegators will want to access essential information about the entity they are delegating their OKTs to.
Discuss the finer details of being a validator on our community chat and forum:
