Palkadot and Kusama validator node service
Stakeworld provides reliable validator services for the polkadot and kusama ecosystem. Polkadot offers 13%-15% APR and Kusama 18%-20% APR. You can nominate STAKEWORLD as one of your validators (DOT, KSM).
Strictly speaking there is no minimum stake but because of the selection mechanism of polkadot and kusama you have a better chance of being included with a higher stake amount, the minimum probably being around 120 DOT and around 5 KSM.
For those who are more technical minded and want to set up their own validator this site offers additional information. There is also a lot of information on the internet, the polkadot and kusama wiki’s and various medium and chat groups, some of it is outdated and scattered and you need good technical knowledge to set up a reliable service. Also you need an even higher stake and it can be challenging to get into the active validator set.
Polkadot/kusama validator node install
There is a relatively good install instruction on the polkadot wiki. The guide is for the previous Ubuntu18.04 LTS version but it works fine with the newer 20.04 LTS version. Also 18.04 LTS seems to have some library issues with newer polkadot versions so I advice the 20.04 version.
Server
The ideal but pricy choice is a dedicated (bare metal) server with powerfull CPU, lots of ram and quick NVMe disk access, in a reliable data centre.
Second best is to install on a VPS with a good amount of ram and processor capacity and a SSD disk setup.
A third option is running it in a docker, it actually works well, although of course is probably not suited for production usage.
STAKEWORLD runs it validator nodes on virtual private servers (VPS).
Steps
- install ubuntu 20.04 with safe ssh access,a firewall and monitoring for problems
- install the polkadot binary via the parity repository, tweak the default systemctl setup with the right command line options, like validator name, ports, default directory, etc.
- wait for the database to sync or optionally download an up to date database to speed up the process.
- fire up your node and check it on https://telemetry.polkadot.io/ (tip: start typing the name and it will select your node), here you can also see the sync state.
- When you are comfortable with your setup and al is stable setup your accounts and connect them (via a session key) to your validator.
Getting in the active validator selection
After setting up a reliable validator the problem is getting in the active validator selection, which is not an easy feat. You need to have enough nominations to get in the selection and start getting some return. Since nobody knows you the question is how to get nominated. A high self stake helps but when your validator doesn’t get selected your dots earn nothing, which they would do if you would nominate another known validator with enough nominations to get in the selection. To tackle the problem of getting elected there is the option of participating in the thousand validator program but you need a high self stake especially for polkadot; minumum 5000 dots for polkadot and minimum10 KSM for Kusama. You also need to confer to some rules (in essence using the “perfect but complicated setup”).