Celo Discord Validator Digest #24
Running KEEP nodes, 10DCL requirements, useful info and community tools.
One of the troubles we have faced as a validator for Celo is keeping up with all the information that comes up in the Celo's Discord discussions. This is especially true for smaller validators whose portfolios include several networks. To help everyone stay in touch with what is going on the Celo validator scene and contribute to the validator and broader Celo community, we have decided to publish the Celo Discord Validator Digest. Here are the notes for the period of 18 January - 14 February 2021.
Discussions
Running KEEP nodes
On January 22, claire | cLabs asked if validators would be interested in running a KEEP node for Celo tBTC:
@claire | cLabs: Might you be interested in running a KEEPnode for Celo tBTC https://tbtc.network/ ? Requirements will be to stake cKEEP tokens (which may be earned) and put up CELO as collateral (min req TBC but probably > $550 worth of CELO).
Many validators expressed their interest but noted that they would like to know more details on the requirements and terms of the program. According to claire | cLabs, the terms are still being discussed:
@claire | cLabs: ... One thing that might be considered is a cKEEP airdrop to all Celo nodes (validators) as incentive to get started.
...
Amounts are TBD right now I believe the min amount on Ethereum is ~$550 worth of CELO and 70K KEEP, Celo tBTC launch would likely require higher amounts (at least of CELO) for security reasons with the intention of eventually decreasing that min. required amount. How much exactly is TBD. Incentives I believe are designed to be at par with "custody fees" so if I have the correct info that would be 5 basis points of BTC deposited denominated in BTC. Node operators need to stake 150% collateral of the BTC deposited.
10DCL
All of the major US carriers have announced their requirements for 10 DLC (10 “Digit Long Code”). 10DLC is the new standard for Application-to-Person (A2P) SMS messaging using 10 digit geographic numbers in the US. Due to this, Twilio and Vonage (Nexmo) now require clients to register a brand and campaign (your use case), and receive approval before sending messages on 10 DLC numbers. This led to some discussions between validators and cLabs:
@timmoreton | cLabs: I don't know that we have any guidance here yet. @aslawson | cLabs can we look into this 10DLC requirement for all providers, but esp Nexmo ? In the mean time, I'd suggest everyone sign up with MessageBird. You will need to do basic KYC to get a US number. We've had a very good experience with that service both in terms of support and in terms of message delivery success. I hope in the near future we can also provide per-country recommendations for the best providers.
@aslawson | cLabs: First I'm hearing about the 10DLC requirement. But I agree if this "brand" is exposed to the receiver, it should be consistent and we should make a recommendation for standard setup. Let me check with nexmo how this is used (and confirm whether this will apply for messagebird/twilio anytime soon). In the meantime, I would also encourage people to try out messagebird since we have experienced less friction with them.
@Cody | cLabs: We're still working with providers to get better guidance on some of these fields, but @aslawson | cLabs and I put together this doc as a starting point. I'll pin it in the next message for posterity.
SMS Provider (Nexmo, Twilio, MessageBird) template response for questions you may be asked after sign-up: https://www.notion.so/clabsco/SMS-Provider-Validator-Support-Template-e168d45219e844e8a826c1ccefb5a06a
Useful info
Important note to validators using Vonage (Nexmo) for their attestation service:
@Cody | cLabs: Hey @Validators ✅, for those of you that are using Nexmo, can you login to your Nexmo portal and update the callback http method to POST-JSON? With this change, in addition to upgrading to v1.2.0, it will help track the result of SMS calls so that we can make sure they're getting delivered. Nexmo Settings: https://dashboard.nexmo.com/settings 1.2.0: https://github.com/celo-org/celo-monorepo/releases/tag/attestation-service-v1.2.0
Also, if you have any routing rules, please ensure that POST to
/delivery_status_nexmo
are accessible.
A note to those who runs validators with multiple proxies:
@Bart | chainvibes: Is there anyone else having a validator on multiple proxies ? I've noticed that if one proxy is having network issues this results in missing blocks while the other proxy is still online...
@Joshua | cLabs: Each proxy is responsible for a subset of the validator direct connections, so if a proxy has trouble connecting and the validator doesn't reassign extern validators to the good proxy you would miss block.
@Bart | chainvibes: Why a subset per proxy? What is the technical advantage of splitting the total set up between de validatorProxies?
@Joshua | cLabs: Validators communicate to each other through direct connections. Maintaining 1 connection between two validators versus peering every proxy to every other proxy limits the total number of connections prevents one single validator from knowing the IP address of all your proxies (if you have multiple). IBFT can handle repeated messages, but you don't want to accidentally dos yourself if you have a couple of validators with several proxies each that have a connection between each proxy (and send every message over that connection).
Community
Robert | Virtual Hive shared the Virtual Hive Celo Network Validator Exporter:
I want to use the occasion to reference our Virtual Hive Celo Network Validator Exporter, which was developed to alert in time and prevent longer downtimes. The Prometheus exporter scrapes downtime and meta information for a specified validator signer address from the Celo blockchain. All data is collected from a blockchain node via RPC. Its been reviewed by Celo and referenced as a community monitoring tool in the docs: https://docs.celo.org/validator-guide/monitoring#virtual-hive-celo-network-validator-exporter
GitHub: https://github.com/virtualhive/celo-network-validator-exporter
Feel free to deploy it yourself and give us some feedback.
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