How to run a NYM Validator

As said in the article about mixnodes, NYM is a technology aiming for providing privacy for the communications.

Apart of the mixnodes, other key piece in the infrastructure are the validators.

As said, the project uses Open Source technology to run, and they have a nice docs with details on how to run a node at https://nymtech.net/docs/, and the one relevant for mixnodes at https://nymtech.net/docs/run-nym-nodes/validators/.

In this case, we can follow the instructions for compiling, but I faced some issues (compiling went fine, but initial sync failed), so in this case, we will use the pre-compiled version provided with the 0.10.0 release.

Let’s now clone the repository:

git clone  https://github.com/nymtech/nym.git
cd nym
git checkout tags/v0.10.0

The binaries we’re interested are inside the validator folder, and two of them are important:

• libwasmvm.so
• nymd

The official guide, already provides enough information about creating a systemd unit file, setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable in our .bashrc, etc. So we will use them after installing the required packages:

dnf -y install certbot nginx
systemctl enable nginx
systemctl start nginx

Those packages will enable our system to serve secure web pages using a domain name validated with let’s encrypt.

Pay special attention to the required steps:

• Initialize the validator as described using nymd init $SERVER --chain-id testnet-finney
• Run wget -O $HOME/.nymd/config/genesis.json https://nymtech.net/testnets/finney/genesis.json to overwrite the created file with the one for finney release.
• Edit the $HOME/.nymd/config/config.toml file as described (persistent_peers, cors_allowed_origins and create_empty_blocks)
• Edit the $HOME/.nymd/config/app.toml to set the proper values for minimum-gas-prices and enabling [API]

Once this is performed, initialize an user, and remember the key that you typed and of course, store the mnemonic properly.

Follow the steps on the guide for setting the systemd service so that the process starts automatically after each reboot:

• systemctl enable nymd
• systemctl start nymd

After a while, with the process started, you can create the validator using the command at the documentation by creating a transaction and staking (you’ll need tokens for that, and the program will ask your confirmation and password before signing and broadcasting the request).

Before it, remember to open the firewall ports:

for port in 1317/tcp 9090/tcp 26656/tcp; do
firewall-cmd --add-port=${port}
firewall-cmd --add-port=${port} --permanent
done

Once it’s finished, you’re ready to run the validator as instructed in the official guide.

Claiming rewards

Once the remaining steps for setting it up have been followed, and the validator has been running for a while, you can check the obtained rewards:

nymd query distribution validator-outstanding-rewards halvaloper<...the address you get when "nymd keys show default --bech=val"...>

Using the values obtained from previous command, you can withdraw all rewards with:

nymd tx distribution withdraw-rewards halvaloper<...the address you get when "nymd keys show default --bech=val"...> --from nym-admin   --keyring-backend=os   --chain-id="testnet-finney"   --gas="auto"   --gas-adjustment=1.15   --commission --fees 5000uhal

If you want to check your current balances, check them with:

~/.nymd/nymd query bank balances hal<address>

For example:

balances:
- amount: "22976200"
  denom: stake
- amount: "919376"
  denom: uhal
pagination:
  next_key: null
  total: "0"

You can, of course, stake back the available balance to your validator with the following command:

nymd tx staking delegate halvaloper<...the address you get when "nymd keys show nym-admin --bech=val"...> <amount>stake      --from nym-admin   --keyring-backend=os   --chain-id "testnet-finney"   --gas="auto"   --gas-adjustment=1.15   --fees 5000uhal

Remember to replace halvaloper with your validator address and nym-admin with the user you created during initialization.

Additionally you can also fix some of the data provided for your validator with:

nymd tx staking edit-validator   --chain-id=testnet-finney   --moniker=<mymoniker>   --details="Nym validator"   --security-contact="YOUREMAIL"   --identity="XXXXXXX"   --gas="auto"   --gas-adjustment=1.15   --from=nym-admin --fees 2000uhal

With above command you can specify the gpg key last numbers (as used in keybase) as well as validator details and your email for security contact

Enjoy! (and if you do, you can Buy Me a Coffee )