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Validators FAQ

Is Mars Hub’s validator set permissionless?​

Answer:

Yes, any validator will be able to participate, provided they meet the technical requirements/constraints of Mars Hub.

Is there a minimum required to stake and become a validator?​

Answer:

No

What is the minimum amount of validators needed for mainnet? Is there a cap?​

Answer:

50 validators are needed for mainnet. Any validator who falls outside of the top 50 in delegated MARS will stop producing blocks and earning rewards.

Will there be incentives for staking?​

Answer:

Staking incentive parameters will not be established immediately on the day Mars Hub launches. However, Delphi Labs intends to construct a proposal to incentivise staking. This proposal will be submitted to the Mars Forum for community review and approval.

The proposal would seek to obtain 750,000 MARS from the community pool to fund these staking rewards per month (9M for the whole 12 month period).

Of course, these incentives are not guaranteed and are dependent on the community approving this proposal. Keep in mind that stakes and incentives would be denominated in MARS, so fiat-denominated returns may differ based on market prices over the staking period.

Will there be a delegation to Genesis Validators?​

Answer:

There will not immediately be a delegation to Genesis Validators. Delphi Labs intends to construct a proposal which will request 50M MARS from the community fund to be temporarily delegated to Genesis Validators. If successfully approved by the community, the 50M MARS will be transferred to a delegator contract. This delegator contract will then equally distribute the 50M MARS among all the genesis validators for 1 month. After one month, delegated tokens will then be returned to the community pool, along with all staking rewards associated with this delegation.

Of course this delegation is not guaranteed and is dependent on the Mars community approving this proposal.

Will there be a public Mars Hub testnet?​

Answer:

Yes. There is a public Mars Hub testnet. It is available for validators to participate in this chain.

How long is the unbonding period (the length of time to return staking amount after unstaking)?​

Answer:

14 days

Is there slashing on the network?​

Answer:

Yes, poorly performing validator nodes (i.e. those that are offline or have weak network connections) will be penalized and earn fewer rewards.

Is it required to use sentry nodes as a security measure?​

Answer:

Although not required, validators should consider using sentry nodes as a security measure.

To learn more about sentry node architecture, see here.

Should I host my validator through a cloud provider or a "bare metal" server?​

Answer:

When you use a cloud provider to host your validator, you are likely using a shared SSD, which is generally pretty slow. You will likely miss some blocks, which will effect your total uptime.

Bare metal servers generally offer better performance than cloud providers. There are some bare metal hosting services that allow for remote access to dedicated servers.

How can I get started now?​

Answer:

Get started by:

  • downloading and compiling the marsd software, which is open source at: https://github.com/mars-protocol/hub
  • sign a gentx (genesis transaction) and submit it to https://github.com/mars-protocol/networks
  • once each genesis validator has submitted their gentx, the final genesis file can be created -Genesis validators can then download this genesis file and turn their server on ahead of the genesis time