Deploy NEAR Validator Node

In this tutorial, we will learn how to deploy a NEAR validator node, and load a validator key into it.

Generate Validator Key

Generate validator account using NEAR CLI tool. Which can be installed using:

npm install -g near-cli

Validator account must have the name validator.

near generate-key validator

An ed25519 private key will be generated and saved in current user home directory under .near-credentials/testnet

cat ~/.near-credentials/testnet/validator.json

It will return an output similar to the following

{
  "account_id": "validator",
  "public_key": "ed25519:CdTBLXMmu9gzoCbNKdUnej1tJNMz5tzRjJF2a9DwAgUr",
  "private_key": "ed25519:4k83DwbSpD3zzai4ZPdeRJcfXttU3Uq68mWWhni6ra2RKnG3jyVKEZyP14gDJZ9W1oqFujpAkidoNrYY4TLqijsG"
}

Change private_key field to secret_key.

Generate Secret for Validator Private Key

Create a Kubernetes secret from the generated private key in the previous step:

kubectl create secret generic validator-key  --from-file=key=$HOME/.near-credentials/testnet/validator.json

Deploy NEAR Validator Node

The following manifest describes a NEAR node that syncs NEAR testnet network: testnet, enables HTTP JSON-RPC server rpc: true, loads validator key from the Kubernetes secret that we've created in the previous step, and uses NEAR Core client:

near.yaml

apiVersion: near.kotal.io/v1alpha1
kind: Node
metadata:
  name: near-node
spec:
  network: testnet
  validatorSecretName: validator-key
  rpc: true

Apply near.yaml manifest:

kubectl apply -f near.yaml

Kotal operator will notice your near-node and will create all the necessary pods, persistent volumes, services, configmaps, and secrets neccessary.

You can fetch the deployed NEAR Node using:

kubectl get nodes.near

It will return an output similar to the following:

NAME         NETWORK    CLIENT      VALIDATOR
near-node    testnet    nearcore    true

Note that validator is true in the prevous output 😇

Fetch Node Logs

Get the pods that has been created by Kotal for the node:

kubectl get pods

It will return an output similar to the following:

NAME              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
near-node-0       1/1     Running   0          1m

Get the logs of the running node:

kubectl logs -f near-node-0

It will return node logs similar to the following:

Apr 08 12:24:09.930  INFO neard: Version: 1.23.1, Build: 1.23.0-9-gc0551c84b-modified, Latest Protocol: 50
Apr 08 12:24:09.937  INFO near: Did not find "/home/near/kotal-data/data" path, will be creating new store database
Apr 08 12:24:10.438  INFO stats: Server listening at ed25519:GK2bMCbzgjFrdAQPFu2qSc6rViwX4MUb8WZb97CAfUMr@0.0.0.0:24567
Apr 08 12:24:20.444  INFO stats: # 9820210 Downloading headers 0.00% (53273496)   5/3/40 peers ⬇ 0.7kiB/s ⬆ 0.2kiB/s 0.00 bps 0 gas/s CPU: 0%, Mem: 0 B
Apr 08 12:24:30.447  INFO stats: # 9820210 Downloading headers 0.00% (53273498)   5/3/40 peers ⬇ 0.7kiB/s ⬆ 0.2kiB/s 0.00 bps 0 gas/s CPU: 4%, Mem: 78.4 MiB
Apr 08 12:24:40.417  INFO stats: # 9820210 Downloading headers 0.00% (53273497)   5/3/40 peers ⬇ 0.7kiB/s ⬆ 0.2kiB/s 0.00 bps 0 gas/s CPU: 10%, Mem: 99.6 MiB
...

Finally you can delete the node by:

kubectl delete -f near.yaml

Kubernetes garbage collector will delete all the resources that has been created by Kotal NEAR Node controller.

Further Reading

1. Deploy NEAR stacking pool

2. Staking on NEAR

3. Upgradable staking pool

4. NEAR validator bootcamp