MultiversX Validators Announcements

Our custom implementation of Zabbix, monitoring all the Elrond Foundational nodes

Oracle VM VirtualBox monitoring - a local Linux VM guest running on a Windows host, sending all the TXs right now

Netdata - simple & nice UI

📊 Leaderboards updated Hello Nodes team, The Leaderboards have been updated with performance scoring up to 28 June 23:59 UTC and includes Mission scoring up to #4. Scoring covers the following periods: • Release v1.0.132 6/17/2020 11:30 UTC - 6/27/2020 14:00 UTC , 5 000 points / 24 hours • Release v1.0.134 6/27/2020 17:00 UTC - 6/28/2020 23:59 UTC, 10 000 points / 24 hours, no peer modifier, no jail time 🎖 Mission #4 scoring summary - Sending hundreds of thousands of transactions must have been a lot of fun, for anyone. There were times where we thought "she" couldn't take it, asked you to start & stop a few times, watched "her" recover, quite an intense experience. It was also very frustrating, as people were concerned about the calls to stop, extensions, parameters changing and so on. We can hope life as a mainnet validator will be extremely boring but we should prepare for it being exciting. In that regard, Mission #4 turned out to be an achievement, even if it didn't go according to the original plan. ✅ We decided to give max points to everyone who reached the 150k transactions milestone, and boosted those who took care to stop sending when we asked. We also scored those who did not reach the milestone with 0.0333... * TX + 0.04 * TX(t) - 150k of transactions sent in time would mean 11 000 points. TX - transaction, TX(t) transaction send in times when it was ok to, aka not when we said stop. This scoring methodology was chosen to alleviate concerns about fairness, especially in light of technical issues & short notice call for action. The rest of the scoring methodology can be reviewed here https://t.me/BattleOfNodes/222 ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

📣 Patch v1.0.136 is live Hello Nodes team, The latest patch fixes the issue with nodes not being able to come online after the reshuffle restart. Mission #5 is here. Please read on 👇 ⏱ Genesis time Wednesday 01 July 13:00 UTC 🎖 Mission #5 - Smart Contracts "Hello World!" Smart Contracts are persistent scripts which can be deployed on the blockchain and called upon to perform specific tasks. They can be simple automations of repetitive tasks, such as sending transactions. They can also perform actions involving complex logic, on & off-chain data, be part of a larger mesh of interconnected smart contracts, and so on. Smart Contracts will be important in the life of a Validator. They help automate rewards distribution, manage delegations from 3rd parties, participate in governance and tap into the DeFi potential of your stake. Before we get into all of that, let's first try deploying and interacting with one. 👉 Please do: deploy a copy of the "Counter" smart contract from each of your wallets. Collect the results of the deployment (transaction hash & resulting Smart Contract address) and send them in the data field of a transaction, together with 100 xERD, following the rules of Mission #2. Repeat for each wallet. Scriptable 👌 Details: • Counter smart contract deployment tutorial (link) • Deployment output example: { "tx": "b6175893ec56b9fc26592f0c8a90ce5f2a2d002289ac080d8a402c1d161cae64", "contract": "erd1qqqqqqqqqqqqqpgqg88kuq70vkwawnp77n354jte5j8kr59rtcxqpeht57" } • Mission #2 details (link) - Shard 0: erd1hqplnafrhnd4zv846wumat2462jy9jkmwxtp3nwmw8ye9eclr6fq40f044 - Shard 1: erd1utftdvycwgl3xt0r44ekncentlxgmhucxfq3jt6cjz0w7h6qjchsjarml6 • Transaction value: 100 xERD • Get the latest erdpy version:

wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ElrondNetwork/elrond-sdk/master/erdpy-up.py | python3

• Remember to run this before starting the tutorial:

export PATH=${HOME}/.local/bin:${PATH}

⏱ Mission #5 duration & score: Complete by Friday 03 July 13:00 UTC for 2500 points. 📊 We resume with performance scoring at 5 000 points / 24 hours 🙏 Auto-update script now looks at locally installed node version, instead of running node version, allowing offline nodes to be upgraded as well. Thanks @FRANKF1957 "Counter" tutorial updated to accommodate "blockchain street punk" culture and make the "get" output readable for humans. Thanks @trahtales Mission #5 text updated to include erdpy update & PATH variables. Thanks @Cryptokev79 ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

🚧 Known issue: Nodes do not restart after reshuffling Hello nodes team, We have acknowledged an issue with the latest release, where nodes shuffling out of a shard at the end of an epoch will no longer come online after restarting. Working around it is not feasible. We take a break and wait for a fix. 📊 Scoring for this period will be a flat 208.33 points / hour, calculated as 5 000 points / 24 hours, for every hour from the genesis of this patch until the genesis of the next one. This score will be assigned to all nodes which were online in the first epoch of this release, i.e. in the first hour after Tuesday 30 June 17:00 UTC 👉 Please do: Leave your VPS/servers running. A patch will be released soon, which will automatically update them and restore functionality. 🎖 Mission #5 has Smart Contracts - get a head start and read the relevant documentation (link). ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

📣 Patch v1.0.135 is live Hello Nodes team, The latest patch fixes the "blacklisting" of harmless nodes and unjails all nodes. Removal of slow nodes continues - jailed nodes due to performance issues won't be able to continue. ⏱ Genesis time Tuesday 30 June 17:00 UTC ⚠️ Nodes which were offline due to the "blacklist" issue might have auto-update issues. Check your node and make sure you upgrade manually if the auto-update fails:

cd ~/elrond-go-scripts-v2

./script.sh upgrade

Do you want to remove the current Node DB & Logs? -> Y 🚨 The Purge continues slower - Peer Rating evolution is reset to normal. An Eligible validator is jailed after 12 consecutive epochs of not proposing a block. Rating does not change for Validators (Waiting). An unJail transactions costs 2 500 000 xERD. Nodes jailed due to performance issues will henceforth be removed. In that sense, The Purge continues, but at a slower pace. 🧪 TPS testing - please refrain from sending bulk transactions yourselves. We want control of the TPS environment moving forward - we will slowly increase to ensure everything happens in a stable environment. 🙏 Thank you for understanding. This is blockchain and every xERD generated is traceable to the registration form. We kindly ask that you don't have us do the extra work of tracking and penalizing offenders. 🎖 Mission #5 has Smart Contracts - get a head start and read the relevant documentation (link). Details about the mission itself will be released shortly after. 📊 Offline nodes due to the "blacklist" bug will not be penalized. ⏳ Leaderboard update & Mission #5 details will follow in a separate post. ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

Validators: General Update Hello Nodes team, After an intense weekend, we kicked Monday off with an important series of mainnet announcements for us validators. Battle of Nodes continues with a new release tomorrow, smart-contract based Mission #5. Read the whole update. 👉 Please do: keep your node online, expect patch tomorrow morning ~ 09:00 UTC ⭕️ Offline nodes that won't start even after a restart - know issue, no action needed, scoring will not penalize these cases. 🚨 The Purge 2 Nodes which were jailed over the weekend will NOT be removed. We do have plenty of other casualties: nodes that did not start with us on Saturday will not move onwards. If you were not able to be online due to understandable reasons but want to proceed: check if your node is on the excluded list and contact 🧙🏻‍♂️ @SeverMM to help you get back in the game. ❌ List of excluded Nodes & reason (link) 📊 Scoring for The Purge 2 will be awarded based on uptime, without considering rating & jailing, so as to keep things fair. Same rules apply for scoring until the next release. We keep promised 10 000 score /24 hours for the period between Saturday 27 June 17:00 UTC (genesis time for the current release) and Sunday 28 June 23:59 UTC (end of The Purge 2). The period after that is again at 5 000 score / 24 hours. Leaderboards have been updated with Mission #2 & #3 scores. Performance & Mission #4 scoring is work in progress. 🤩 More Validator slots added to the mainnet launch without affecting APR. Get on the Mainnet Whitelisting form (link) for a chance of joining us as a Genesis Validator. Read the full announcement, which also mentions Saturday 4 July as an important date to mark down in your calendars: mainnet date will be communicated and Genesis Staking 2.0 starts! ⏱ A new release will be made Tuesday 30 June ~09:00 UTC, which will already include fixes to issues noticed over the weekend. 🎖 Mission #5 has Smart Contracts - get a head start and read the relevant documentation (link). Details about the mission itself will be released with the next patch. ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

Genesis Staking 2.0 & Mainnet Launch Update presentation is LIVE! The presentation by Beniamin & Lucian is happening right now. Join them to get the latest updates about staking & the mainnet launch and ask your questions for the AMA at the end. 👉🏻 https://www.pscp.tv/ElrondNetwork/

🚨 The Purge 2 - we take a break Hello Nodes team, Several nodes are in jail and some nodes are not catching up. We make a break now and wait for a new release soon. Great work from everyone trying to recover! 👉 No action needed for now. Even if your node is jailed, it will get scored like any other node if left online. We tried recovering but the specially implemented rapid decay for node rating made it so the 5 hours the TX spam ran unattended last night lead to more issues than we can fix ourselves. 🕵️‍ What happened: We achieve a high TPS environment by periodically sending simple transactions via multiple entry points into the network. We use an equal number of wallets in shards 0 & 1, and send an equal number of transactions both intra-shard and cross shard. The operation is done using multiple Observer nodes with tweaked anti-spam parameters, to allow this kind of volume of transactions to go through. We periodically query the respective nodes to get the correct nonce of the source wallet and send transactions with the correct nonces hence-forth. This is a measure to prevent flooding the network with invalid nonces, which can cause the transaction pools to be filled with un-actionable transactions and network congestion. One of the observers we used for this process has failed over the night and exactly the invalid nonce situation has happened for Shard 0. As a result, multiple nodes got jailed, regardless of performance. 📊 Scoring will count online time only, to account for the rating issues with Shard 0 Enjoy the rest of the weekend team, we resume with a new patch. ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

🚨 The Purge 2 - a quick look at the data Hello Nodes team, A look at data overnight shows interesting stats: • 52 million TXs in 12 hours • Shard 0 hitrate consistently lower than Shard 1 hitrate • Shard 0 nodes struggling more than Shard 1 nodes • The same amount of TX was being pushed through both • A lot of nodes in jail that we know for a fact are within specs 👌 We stopped the Transactions, the shards immediately started to recover in terms of hitrate. Sending TXs has now resumed at half the intensity. 👉 Please do - Share your node's info (public key & wallet) with us and we will help with unjailing your nodes. We will send 2.5mn xERD for each wallet so you can unjail that's the cost for this release 🔰 Unjail - tell the network that your Validator is ready to resume working, after being kicked out because of low rating • Address: erd1qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqpqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqplllst77y4l • Amount: 2500000 • Gas limit: 6000000 • TxData: unJail@YourNode’s192BLSkeysFromValidatorKey.pem

📣 Patch v1.0.134 is live, The Purge 2 begins Hello Nodes team, The latest patch brings a number of important fixes and has a config tailored for The Purge - Peer Rating decay increased to accelerate jailing of low performing nodes, unJail transactions are much more expensive. ⏱ Genesis time Saturday 27 June 17:00 UTC 🚨 The Purge 2 rules: • Node with rating below 55 as of Sunday 28 June 23:59 UTC will be purged • No unjailing ❌ List of excluded Nodes & reason (link) 👌 Be online, have your node running 2 CPU, 4GB RAM, 80GB SSD, 100Mbit - each, have fun 📊 This high-TPS interval will be worth 10000 points per 24hrs ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

🚨 The Purge 2 - getting ready Hello Nodes Team, The Purge 2 begins soon. A snapshot has been taken of all the registered validators. Nodes that are online but jailed have made it in the list as Validators in the next patch. Offline nodes are not included and will be purged automatically. If there is any good reason why your validator was offline during this snapshot, please contact 🧙‍♂️‍ @SeverMM ❌ List of excluded Nodes & reason (link) 👌 Be online, have your node running 2 CPU, 4GB RAM, 80GB SSD, 100Mbit - each, have fun ⏱ Patch ETA - 2 hours, team prepping already ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

🎖 Mission #4 FINAL update & The Purge 2 Hello Nodes team, Mission #4 is like the year 2020 - let's hope it just ends already. In spite of all the frustration, it's been a good learning experience, we found out more about the tools & protocol and we've bonded together more, which is exactly what we want. ⏱ Mission 4 ends today at 20:00 UTC. A patch is coming after that. So, even if we break it, it's worth a shot - if you still haven't reached 150 000 txs, give her all you've got to try and make it. Check your nonce:

erdpy account get --nonce --address=erd1... --proxy=https://api.elrond.com

Try catching up:

python3 mission4bulk.py --pem=Elrond.pem --sleep-before-recall=5 --sleep-after-bulk=10 --bulk-size=300

📊 If you reached 150 000 transactions per wallet by Friday 26 June 20:00 UTC, mission accomplished - 10 000 points. Check with 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie 🚨 The Purge 2 We will be issuing a fresh patch Saturday 27 June around 08:00 UTC. As soon as we confirm it to be stable, we start doing TPS, in 1000 increments, until we reach 5000. Important: we will be issuing the transactions ourselves, to make sure that we are in control of the TPS. Purge rules: • Node with rating below 55 as of Sunday 28 June 23:59 UTC will be purged • No unjailing ⚙️ System specs: 1 node = 2 CPU, 4 GB RAM, 80GB storage (SSD ideally), 100Mbit bandwidth 📡 Check your bandwidth with a speed test like these here (link) 🛠 Check our "How to choose a VPS" section of the Elrond docs FAQs if you're looking for moving away from Contabo: https://docs.elrond.com/validators/faqs ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

🎖 Mission #4 resumes - check the info Hello Nodes team, What a week! Mission #4 will live in infamy. For those of you who missed the chat - Contabo VPSes were largely the culprit of recent issues, as they've been throttling network bandwidth from 600Mbps down to 20Mbps. TL;DR - don't use Contabo. 👉 Please do - Check your nonce:

erdpy account get --nonce --address=erd1... --proxy=https://api.elrond.com

Then resume sending as per the instructions in @alwin79 's table (link) - please estimate your successful TX % based on the intervals you know you've been sending in. python3 mission4bulk.py --pem=Elrond.pem --sleep-before-recall=5 --sleep-after-bulk=45 --bulk-size=(check table) 🦸‍♀️ Please enable alerts from Bonnie, we will ping you if the network gets clogged 🚨 The Purge 2 We will issue a new patch and start a new purge over the weekend. We will be in a moderately high TPS Saturday & Sunday. Nodes that end the weekend with a rating below 55 will not continue. Getting jailed over the weekend will disqualify you. 🏋️ Preparing for the purge: Ensure you are running 2CPUs, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB SSD, 100Mbit per node. The network part is really important. Don't be on Contabo. 📡 Check your bandwidth with a speed test like these here (link). ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

🎖 Mission #4 update - Stop All TXs! Hello Nodes team, The network performance keeps degrading, Shard 0 Hitrate (minted blocks/rounds in epoch) is at 65%, Shard 1 at 57%. 🛑 Stop all transfers - please stop all, as soon as you see this message. We will return with info about when it's safe to resume and how. ⏱ Mission 4 timeline extended until Friday 26 June 20:00 UTC 🛡 The main element of a team is its members being team players - committing the same resources as everyone is required for us to be successful. We can't conquer new horizons if we don't work together as one. Last call to revisit your node setup and follow our recommendations. 🚨 The Purge 2 is coming - low performing nodes and operators repeatedly ignoring our calls to band together & reduce TX sending will not proceed after the next patch. ⚔️ See you on the battle #fiedl ! 🛡 🌐 Useful links: Start Here | Explorer | Wallet | GitHub | Docs | Issue | Winning | Stake | Unjail | Keybase | 🦸🏼‍♀️ Bonnie | Leaderboards

⚠️ Team, network in trouble, let's SLOW DOWN Hello Nodes Team, She's at her limits, let's take it easy on her. Please stop any ongoing transactions. If you are speeding up for any reason, please stop altogether. Let's give her room to breathe, so she can handle all TXs. 👉 Please do: STOP any high TX sending outside of specs. STOP if your nonce is over 150 000 👉 Only run like this: python3 mission4bulk.py --pem=Elrond.pem --sleep-before-recall=5 --sleep-after-bulk=45 💢 Nodes with ratings below 50: do your best to address the situation: more CPUs, RAM, SSD instead of HDD, higher bandwidth. Reminder on specs for each node: 2 CPU, 4GB RAM, 80GB HDD (we're considering changing to SSD!), 100Mbit We're considering another purge, so we don't have to keep spamming announcements about "slowing down". Thank you for understanding!

⚠️ Team, there are ZERO reasons for us to be at this high TPS. Please, SLOW DOWN. If we are forced to take time to find out who is not playing by the common-sense rules we clearly communicate, we will do so and simply remove the offenders, altogether. Let's act as a team. SLOW DOWN. 👉 Please do: STOP any high TX sending outside of specs. STOP if your nonce is over 150 000 👉 Only run like this: python3 mission4bulk.py --pem=Elrond.pem --sleep-before-recall=5 --sleep-after-bulk=45