How to create a new validator in cyberd

how-to-create-a-new-validator.md

Creating a new validator in Cyberd

WARNING: This technique should only be used in testnet. NEVER follow these instructions in mainnet. You would lose all your delegators and reputation.

Imagine that you have been jailed and that you are in buggy testnet like euler-4. This was my case. And I was being the most jailed validator in history, spending more time in jail than The Shawshank Redemption's protagonist.

Imagine you are in this desperate situation or maybe some other one I cannot think of, the point being: you need/want to create a new validator.

How do you that?

Well, in this mini-guide I hope to show you how to do this in a simple manner (thank you Save The Ales for showing me the wisdom).

1. Go to you cyberd folder located in the root directory.

cd /cyberd

This is where the cyberd docker container is taking the information from. Basically, the files that determine our validator's identity are node_key.json and priv_validator_key.json.

2. Making sure that we create a new validator. If now we run

docker exec cyberd cyberd tendermint show-validator

and write down our validator identifier (should start with cybervalconspub), we will be sure that we are creating a new validator.

3. Remove the node_key.json and priv_validator_key.json files. In my case I just changed their name.

mv daemon/config/node_key.json daemon/config/node_keyold.json
mv daemon/config/priv_validator_key.json daemon/config/priv_validator_keyold.json

4. Restart the docker container.

docker restart cyberd

It will take a little while until you can connect again with the cyberdcli. You can check when the cli is avaliable again using docker exec cyberd cyberdcli status repeatedly. It doesn't take too long.

5. Check your new validator's pubkey!

docker exec cyberd cyberd tendermint show-validator

If everything went well you should have now a new validator pubkey and are ready to create your fresh new validator. Nevertheless, I would keep the old node_key.json and priv_validator_key.json in some backup folder just in case.

6. Create your new validator. Just like you created the old one, do

docker exec -ti cyberd cyberdcli tx staking create-validator \
  --amount=10000000cyb \
  --min-self-delegation "1000000" \
  --pubkey=<your_node_pubkey> \
  --moniker=<your_node_nickname> \
  --trust-node \
  --from=<your_key_name> \
  --commission-rate="0.10" \
  --commission-max-rate="0.20" \
  --commission-max-change-rate="0.01" \
  --chain-id=<testnet_chain_id>

and voilà! You have your new validator running.

You can check it with

docker exec cyberd cyberdcli query staking validator <cybervaloper...>

and see those wonderful Jailed: false and Status: Bonded 🤩

I hope this mini-guide was helpful for you all! Any comments and improvements please, don't hesitate.