Validating

Network validation is thus open to participants who have registered a uid on any subnetwork and who have enough TAO staked on their hotkey to be considered a top 128 validator.

Staking TAO

Attaching TAO on your validator can be achieved in two ways.

By staking TAO to your miners directly by yourself


1# Stake funds to your hotkey account within the bittensor incentive mechanism.
2btcli stake 
3    --wallet.name YOUR_WALLET_NAME 
4    --wallet.hotkey YOUR_HOTKEY_NAME

Or by attracting delegated stake by nominating (and then advertising) your hotkey.


1# Nominate your hotkey as a delegate, making it available for delegated stake.
2btcli nominate 
3    --wallet.name YOUR_WALLET_NAME 
4    --wallet.hotkey YOUR_HOTKEY_NAME
5
6# To delegate funds to the hotkey of a delegate (your own or others)  
7btcli delegate 
8    --delegate_ss58key DELEGATE_SS58KEY

Running a validator

After attaining enough TAO for a validator permit we recommend running Bittensor's core validator. You can run and install the core validator from source.


1$ git clone https://github.com/opentensor/bittensor.git
2$ python3 -m pip install -e bittensor/
3$ tree bittensor
4    bittensor/                             
5        neurons/                            # Miners and Validators across all subnetworks.
6            text_prompting/                 # Miners and Validators for the text_prompting subnetwork.
7                validators/                 # Validators.
8                    core/                   # The root folder for the core validator.
9                        neuron.py           # Core validator miner main script.
10                        requirements.txt    # Core validator requirements.
11                        README.md           # Core validator instructions.
12                    ...

When running, specify the --netuid 1 parameter to select the appropriate subnetwork for your validator, e.g. Subnetwork 1.

neurons/text_prompting/validators/core
1python3 ~/.bittensor/bittensor/neurons/text_prompting/validators/core/neuron.py 
2    --netuid 1
3    --wallet.name YOUR_WALLET_NAME 
4    --wallet.hotkey YOUR_HOTKEY_NAME
5    --logging.trace

Running with PM2

It is recommended that you run validator using a process manager such as PM2.


1sudo apt-get install npm
2npm install pm2
3pm2 start <path to validator.py> 
4    --name my_validator 
5    --interpreter python3 
6    -- ... your args i.e. --wallet.name ...

Validator Permit

Only the largest 128 validators, in terms of stake, on any particular subnetwork are considered to have validator permit. Validators with permit are considered active within Bittensor's mining mechanism, Yuma Consensus, can validate the network, and get dividends.

How do I check to see if my validator has permit?

The amount can be pulled from the metagraph based on your uid.


1import bittensor as bt
2subnet = bt.metagraph(1)
3wallet = bt.wallet( name = 'my_wallet_name', hotkey = 'my_validator_hotkey_name' )
4my_uid = subnet.hotkeys.index( wallet.hotkey.ss58_address )
5print ('validator permit', subnet.validator_permit[ my_uid ])

How much TAO is required to attain a validator permit?

The amount of TAO required depends on how the other largest 128 wallets distribute TAO across themselves. You can calculate the minimum using bt.metagraph:


1import bittensor as bt
2subnet = bt.metagraph(1)
3stake_requirement = subnet.S.sort()[0][-128:]
4print ('validator permit requirement', stake_requirement)

Mining

Validator Permit