Run a Pruned Fantom Validator Node — Part 1

Published in

Coinmonks

3 min readApr 19, 2022

Build your pruned validator node.

Tutorial Pages:
Part 1 — You are here
Part 2 — Download & Synchronize Chain Data
Part 3 — Register & Run
Full Tutorial

Additional Validator Help
Increase Self Delegation — Coming Soon
Lock Self Stake — Coming Soon
Increase & Relock Self Stake — Coming Soon
Update Validator Name and Logo — Coming Soon

Do you want to start a validator node on the Fantom network? No problem. Do you want to save a significant amount of money on chain-data storage costs? No problem. Secure the network and save money by spinning up a pruned validator node.

What is pruning?

In a nutshell, pruning chain data removes all of the extra, non-essential data from your local copy of the blockchain. Pruned chain data is perfectly acceptable for validator nodes.

A few final notes…

First you need the minimum self stake amount (it’s a lot).

Minimum Stake: 500,000 FTM

Just an FYI, the maximum amount other people can stake to your account is:

Maximum Validator Staking: 15x the self-stake amount

And your rewards…

Rewards: currently ~13% APY (Normal APY on self-stake + 15% of delegators’ rewards). APY varies based on staked %. For up-to-date APY, check https://fantom.foundation/ftm-staking/.

Validator Parameters

I run a Fantom validator on a Google Cloud Compute N2D Series High Memory 4 instance with 700GB of disk space. In other words, a computer with 4vCPUs, 32 GB Memory and 700GB of storage. That size seems to maintain between 40% and 50% CPU utilization most of the time .

TLDR;

4vCPUs
32 GB Memory
700 GB Storage

For comparison, a full validator node needs to maintain 4 TERABYTES of storage. That’s way more expensive.

Overview

Launch Cloud Instance
Setup a non — root user
Install required tools
Build and Test
Download Pruned Chained Data
Sync Validator Node
Register Validator
Run Validator Node

Launch Cloud Instance

You can run your node on private hardware or on a cloud service. Fantom Foundation recommends running nodes on the big cloud providers (Amazon, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean). I have ran nodes on both Google Cloud and Digital Ocean. To clarify, I will be using commands for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS in this tutorial.

Setup a non — root user

There are many, many tutorials for this one. Here is my personal favorite written by the team at Digital Ocean.

Install Required Tools

Installs tools that are needed to get the validator node ready.

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential wget ufw snapd
sudo snap install go --classic

Setup a firewall

This lets the good messages in and keeps the bad messages out. Thanks UFW.

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 5050/tcp
sudo ufw allow 5050/udp
yes | sudo ufw enable

Install the validator node

Pull the source code from the latest official validator node release by the Fantom foundation. As of writing (4/28/22) this is the latest release.

wget -qO - https://github.com/Fantom-foundation/go-opera/archive/refs/tags/v1.1.0-rc.4.tar.gz | tar -xvz -C .

Build the validator node

Build the executable from the source code using the tools that were installed earlier.

cd go-opera-1.1.0-rc.4
make
cp -r build/ ../.
cd ..
rm -r go-opera-1.1.0-rc.4

The next section will detail how to download the Fantom Opera Genesis Block and synchronize your node using pruned chain data. Building your node this way will save you a significant amount of time and money.

Ethan Harsh
Web3 Developer | Fantom Enthusiast
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