32 ETH Staking, running a Validator

[JBravo]

Hi everyone, I am still learning about crypto here at Ivan’s, I am listening a lot about the 32 ETH Staking and running a Validator, I checked out the site yesterday.

https://launchpad.ethereum.org/

I have some ETH and planning on Holding for long term, so I am thinking it makes sense to place some on the staking, and also running a validator. I have a iMac and a MacBook air, can this be good enough to run a validator?

My question are: is it worth it?, is it safe? Are you guys planning on doing it? Any comments or suggestions?

Thanks

JB

[Jeremy]

Hello JB!

I was considering this myself, and I think I’ve decided against it for now after considering this video here. Really, it’s partly because I’d have to get 30 more Ether by selling my BTC, and I’m hodling my BTC too hard to want to give any up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar_NBiCs48w

[lyynxxx]

Hi,

is it worth it?:

we will see, I think it is

is it safe? :

nothing is safe enough to do in the first time, anything can go wrong, so yes, a valid fear you lose some of/all of your ETH.

Are you guys planning on doing it?:

Sure, I’m working on my node in this time too.

But as I see most of the people only see the potential financial gains and not the technical skills you need to run a validator 365/24/7. There are a lot of tutorial written by enthusiastic amateurs like me,but thants far from enough. Non of them mention security, failsafe solutions, backups and restores, etc. only the most basic stuff you need the magic working.

Ofc more participation equals mor decentralization, but… jumping into this just becouse it’s trend, you only hurt yourself. You can’t pause the network for a week, while you google why your validator is not working! Even if they have good discord support.

If you are not technical enough there are some other solutions like Stkr or RocketPool and they are available for anyone from 0.5 ETH maybe?

Don’t get me wrong, I encourage you to learn about and participate in the process! But be sure you have tested your setup and prepared to many possible situation. Even if you only play on testnet, that will worth your time if you are interested in crypto and want to learn how things are working.

I recommend anyone who is even a bit uncertain, just wait and learn, play with setups and let the early adopers take the risk. You will see how things are working and after time you can decide you are willing to risk it or not.

[rd2madnss]

@lyynxxx Good post, thanks for the opinion! I have over 32 ETH and I bought them earlier this year with staking in mind. Your comments have been helpful to me now and since it has been a couple of months or so since you posted, do you have any updated comments?

I am waiting for a new CPU to arrive for some older MB, RAM, RAID HDDs, etc. hardware I have that I would like to turn into a Beacon node and validator. I watched one video from back in Nov 2020 when there was less certainty about ETH 2.0 because there was not yet enough stake and validators committed; no longer an issue as I gather 2.0 is up and running now with enough staked to have the reward down around 10%? If I’m not mistaken. I think that’s enough of a reward and indication that things are going basically as they are intended to setting up ETH 2.0, to make it worth my while to set up this rig, correct?

What pointers do you have for a linux n00b to get something up and running on a testnet first and then onto the real deal, all goes well? Some links to good detailed tutorials perhaps? @ivan and friends could have a whole course or two on setting up nodes and other hardware, each for ETH and BTC at the very least? I have a good internet connection, Uninterruptible Power Supplies, decent hardware, all the physical things I think in theory to make this work. I need some more good knowledge about the software side of things. Help! Thank you!

[lyynxxx]

Hi @rd2madnss,

On https://ethereumstudymaster.com you can find a lot free, quallity study material. They have Metamask integration and you can claim POAP-s, digital badges as you finish a course, pretty cool if you ask me!

The ETHStaker community has also a lot of good stuff you can read. They had a workshop about setting up a node, but can’t find the link now.

You can start with Somer’s guides on Medium (google “eth2 ubuntu prysm” and probably you get them on the first links). They are far from a complete tutorial, but a good starting point, just to launch a node on testnet. Maybe the most popular, even if it’s a default linux install without any security considerations.
Later you can think about the advanced Linux stuff (maybe chosing another linux distro, system tuning, firewalls, minitoring, alerting, backups, security stuff, etc.). Sadly I did not found a good tutorial so I wrote my own. I have a fully scripted and automated node setup, so I can spin up a new node ASAP if any issue comes up.

I recommend you to spend at leas 3-5 weeks on the testnet and play with your setup and take notes! Try out different scenarios (system update, switchin clients, rebuild everything, importing signing keys to new system, etc. ), it will worth your time!

I’m playing on the upcoming “Crypto.com Chain” on testnet now, but I’m happy to help you after I finished organizing my notes.

[JBravo]

Hello Everyone,
An update on running the node, so I decided to do it, I staked 96 ETH for 3 nodes. I bought an Avado i5 Node for 1099dlls:
https://ava.do/shop/bankless

Instructions to set up:
https://wiki.ava.do/

I have been running it since last january 19th:

You need good internet and constant power, I bought an UPS just to make sure internet and the node are always running even in small power variations, I have solar panels at home so the electricity bill is not concern. After a month made 0.9173 ETH, I believe in the long run it will be worth it, my plan is to buy 2 more nodes with 64 ETH, and stake them. Probably after bull run if I can make the gains to buy more eth. Right now the rewards APR is 9%, it should decrease to 5% in the future. So I am thinking for the long run as a kind of retirement plan:

32 x 5 = 160 ETH for 5 validators.
160 x 0.05 = 8 ETH per year.

I am thinking in 2 or 5 years ETH should be worth around 10-20K as per projections from Youtube Gurus so let´s say

8 ETH x 10,000 dlls = 80,000 dlls per year, I think that is a good amount to retire where I live in Mexico.

The downside is that this ETH that is on Stake is locked and I will not be able to withdraw it when the bear market comes and buy it later at cheaper price. Might be that this fact out weights the profits. But as I say I am thinking of it as a retirement money. I will tell you in 30 years how it went

Hope it gives some info for guys thinking about doing it.

Good luck in following days and months, this is my first bull run and it sure is a fun ride, take care.

[thecil]

Interesting, thanks for sharing this

From my perspective, its a very good plan, as long as you cant maintain yourself through the bear market hodling like a true warrior. Its long term, so it should be funds that you are never going to touch in 10 years whatsoever.

By that time, probably you would be enjoying a decent retirement

[Mauro]

Very nice!! Making ETH 2.0 happen step by step.

[AdamFortuna]

Amazing! Thanks for sharing

[lyynxxx]

Cool ! I also plan my nodes will be my retirement. And a huge thumbs up for the beaconcha.in dashboard you are using. I find it very nice and usefull, it has a very nice notification system too, so you can see if your validator misses attestation or offline a longer period of time or maybe proposed a block.

There are some other alternatives too, but maybe Avado is the most popular pre-configured eth2 node. I saw some tubers use it too, but for my it’s a no go, as if some hw failure occures, you can’t pull an other one from your hat in about an hour. Also this is why I think it’s very important to undersant how a validator is set up, how you can switch the validator clients, migrate your keys, etc.
Going offline for an hour maybe two can lead for no rewards and maybe decreased rewards for a short period of time, but going offline for a day or longer time and you get slashed.

It’s simple and fun, but for safety I definetly suggest anyone to get familiar with the manual validator setup. And as disasre recivery steps: migrating from Avado to a custom built validator PC/server.