Servi Node Guide: Requirements and On-boarding
Servi Nodes are an essential component of the IOST network and ecosystem. A Servi Node is a “full” node that stores the full transaction history of the IOST blockchain, produces blocks, and validates transactions. It requires a moderately powerful server and large disk space and must stay up to date with the current IOST protocol version and remain stable. Servi Nodes are rewarded for this by earning from the “Block Production” reward pool (25% of total yearly rewards). Opting to be a Servi Node is recommended for those with technical knowledge of servers, coding, and blockchain protocols.
Servi Node Requirements and On-boarding
To streamline the on-boarding of Servi Nodes, enable the stability and progressive scaling of the IOST network as well as ensuring profitability of Servi Nodes from block production rewards, the required vote amount received from Voters and/or from self-staking to qualify for Servi Node status is set at 10,000,000* Votes.
The required votes to become a Partner node remains at 2,100,000 Votes. Once your node receives the 2.1M votes, you will become an official Partner Node and start earning from the “Share of Vote” and” Contribution Reward system” reward pools (75% of the total 840M yearly rewards).
Once your node reaches 10M* votes, you can apply to become a Servi Node. The minimum hardware and vote requirement for this are as follows:
- A server with minimum requirements: AWS c5.2xlarge (8-core CPU with 16GB RAM), with at least 5TB storage for the first year or equivalent, and over 100Mbps bandwidth. (Estimated $500 USD per month rental cost)
- A server admin who can set up and manage the server and is responsive on Slack and/or Telegram to updates and patches (24hrs max).
- An IOST Partner Node with 10M* votes.
- The candidate node will need to submit its contribution plan to the ecosystem upon application and have more than 10M votes for every quarter to maintain its Servi node status.
*As of April 2021: To ensure minimum Servi node profitability, a Servi Node is recommended to have at least 10M votes to participate in block production.
Steps for Becoming a Servi Node and Joining the Network
- Meet all requirements above.
- Join the IOST developer slack channel and contact Kuda with your request to become a Servi Node^.
- The Foundation will review your Servi Node application and ensure that you have the requisite technical expertise and network commitment.
- Setup your server following the documentation here.
- Should your application be successful^^, your server will be tested for performance and stability and then onboarded onto the IOST network.
^ Servi Nodes will be on-boarded in order of date from the request on Slack.
^^ To ensure network stability, the Foundation reserves the right to manage the acceptance and on-boarding of nodes into the network.
Responsibilities of Servi Nodes
As a Servi Node, you must ensure your node stays online and is running the most recent protocol version and update with any new releases and hotfixes. This is to ensure the high performance and stability of the network. Release info will be shared into the Servi Node Slack channel and telegram group.
- Nodes that do not update within 48 hours will be removed
- Nodes that are offline for more than 72 hours will be removed
Once updates have completed and/or come back online, these nodes will be added to the end of the queue for onboarding back onto the network.
Servi Nodes that go below the vote threshold will be notified and given a period of 7 days to reach above the vote requirement. If after 7 days this has not been achieved, these Servi Nodes will be transitioned to Partner Nodes.
More Info
For more detailed information on various topics please check out the other articles on our Medium or the links below. To apply for node status, start earning rewards and join our growing ecosystem check out the links below.
Apply here: https://iost-eng.typeform.com/to/MQzgbm
