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Validator Quickstart

It takes just 5 minutes to start using Skip Select to capture MEV with your validator.

Summary of Steps​

Estimated Time: 5 mins

  1. Register as a validator on skip.money/registration to receive an API key
  2. Compile your node binaries with mev-tendermint
  3. Add 3-4 lines of additional config to your nodes
  4. Restart your nodes 🚀

Any questions / issues during integration? Ask us on Discord

Chain IDs that Skip supports:​

Mainnets​

  • Juno Mainnet CHAIN_ID=juno-1
  • Terra2 Mainnet CHAIN_ID=phoenix-1
  • EVMOS Mainnet CHAIN_ID=evmos_9001-2
  • Injective Mainnet CHAIN_ID=injective-1
  • COMDEX Mainnet CHAIN_ID=comdex-1

Testnets​

  • Juno Testnet CHAIN_ID=uni-6
  • Terra2 Testnet CHAIN_ID=pisco-1
  • EVMOS Testnet CHAIN_ID=evmos_9000-4
  • Injective Testnet CHAIN_ID=injective-888
  • Comdex Testnet CHAIN_ID=comdex-test2

1. Register ✅​

🚨  If you don’t already have an API Key, please get one from the Skip registration site.

You will need access to your operator key or a key to which your operator has delegated a MsgVote authorization to register. See these instructions for how to a MsgVote authorization if you're not comfortable using your operator key from a browser wallet.

💵 After registering, you can also use the Skip web app to configure your MEV payments between you / network stakers on the site.

2. Compile your node with mev-tendermint​

We provide forks of the source code for all the open source chains we support at https://github.com/skip-mev that come pre-loaded with mev-tendermint and no other modifications.

Not applicable for Injective

Because the Injective codebase is not open source, Injective requires a different process. You must follow the special Injective instructions here. (Don't worry, they're simple.)

  1. Set SKIP_CHAIN_REPO to the name of the fork of the chain you're building:
  • EVMOS: export SKIP_CHAIN_REPO=evmos
  • JUNO: export SKIP_CHAIN_REPO=juno
  • Terra2: export SKIP_CHAIN_REPO=terra-core
  • Comdex: export SKIP_CHAIN_REPO=comdex
  1. Clone the appropriate fork and enter the directory:
git clone https://github.com/skip-mev/$SKIP_CHAIN_REPO
cd $SKIP_CHAIN_REPO
  1. Determine the current version of the chain binary using the official chain documentation or Skip's documentation here. and checkout the corresponding -mev tag:
git checkout $CHAIN_VERSION-mev
  1. Build the binary as normal using make install
Example

For example, if we were building v10.0.1 of EVMOS, the process would look like:

git clone https://github.com/skip-mev/evmos
cd evmos
git checkout v10.0.1-mev
make install
  1. Repeat this process for all of your full nodes, including if you use Horcrux.
Alternative methods

Read more about other methods that do not require forking our repos here if you would prefer to use the official chain repo and inject mev-tendermint yourself

3. Update config.toml​

mev-tendermint introduces a new section of config in config.toml called [sidecar] that includes several config settings that allow your node to recieve MEV bundles from Skip.

(You can read more about what these are here: Validator Config Reference Docs)

By the end, the end of your config.toml on each node will look something like this (with different string values). Make sure to include the line [sidecar] at the top of this section in config.toml.

# OTHER CONFIG...

# EXAMPLE below (please use the correct values)
[sidecar]
sentinel_peer_string = "fakepeerid@fake_network_id-sentinel.skip.money:26656"
sentinel_rpc_string = "http://fake_network_id.skip.money"
api_key = "fake_api_key"

Extra config for sentry configurations​

Skip this section if you don't use full node sentries, or, equivalently, if you'd like all of your nodes to gossip directly to the sentinel.

These steps are only relevant for folks with set ups where they want one of their nodes to not peer with the Sentinel (e.g. a full signing node with sentries) and instead receive MEV bundles through an intermediary node (e.g. a sentry node)

  • On the sentry nodes:

    • Add an extra line to the [sidecar] config called personal_peer_ids, and add the node id for your validator
    [sidecar];
    sentinel_peer_string =
      "fake-node-id@fake-network-id-sentinel.skip.money:26656";
    sentinel_rpc_string = "http://fake-network-id-api.skip.money";
    api_key = "fake-api-key";
    personal_peer_ids = "NODEID1,NODEID2, ...";

    → You can find your node ids by running:

    <NODE_DAEMON> tendermint show-node-id --home <HOME_DIR>

    # example:
    junod tendermint show-node-id --home ./juno

  • On the validator:

    • Remove the line for sentinel_peer_string
    • Remove the line for sentinel_rpc_string
    • Remove the line for api_key
    • Add an extra line to the [sidecar] config called personal_peer_ids, and add the node ids for your sentry nodes
    [sidecar];
    personal_peer_ids = "NODEID1,NODEID2, ...";

    → You can find your node ids by running:

    <NODE_DAEMON> tendermint show-node-id --home <HOME_DIR>

    # example:
    junod tendermint show-node-id --home ./juno

4. Restart your node 🚀​

That’s it! You should now begin receiving MEV bundles and higher rewards from Skip ✅

If you use Cosmovisor, make sure to point it to the new binary

Run curl -sL localhost:26657/status | jq .result.mev_info to check if you are connected

  • If things are working correctly you should see this:

    {
      "is_peered_with_sentinel": true,
      "last_received_bundle_height": "0"
    }

  • Troubleshooting: If you aren't receiving the expected output, please visit the troubleshooting page or get in touch with Skip team for assistance.

  • Monitoring: mev-tendermint exposes new Prometheus metrics under the "mev" namespace in tendermint. The most important metric is mev_sentinel_connected, which is 1 if your node is able to receive MEV transactions from Skip, and 0 otherwise. Check out this page for more information on monitoring and alerting solutions

Handling Chain Upgrades​

Skip does not make chain upgrades more complex.

Simply follow the instructions from step 2 above each time you need to upgrade a node, using the new $CHAIN_VERSION-mev tag.