Voluntary Exiting a Validator

Remove a validator from staking duties.

Use the Voluntary Exit command to signal your intentions to permanently stop your duties as a validator.

• Timeline: Voluntary exiting takes a minimum of 2048 epochs (or ~9days). There is a queue to exit and a delay before your validator is finally exited.

• Consequences: Once a validator is in exited state, it's non-reversible. You would need to re-key, or generate new validator keys to start staking again.

• ETH Deposit: In order to re-claim your 32ETH validator deposit and perform a full withdrawal, you must have previously set a Withdrawal Address. If not yet set, see here: 0x01 withdrawal address.

• Responsibilities: After your validator leaves the exit queue and is truly exited, it is safe to turn off your execution client, consensus client and validator.

Lighthouse

lighthouse account validator exit \
--keystore $HOME/.lighthouse/mainnet/validators/<0x validator>/<keystore.json file> \
--beacon-node http://localhost:5052 \
--network mainnet

Example:

lighthouse account validator exit \
--keystore $HOME/.lighthouse/mainnet/validators/0x838f024753064e90fd8fa183400af82dd2103df885/keystore-m_12311_12-112312.json \
--beacon-node http://localhost:5052 \
--network mainnet

Teku

/usr/bin/teku/bin/teku voluntary-exit \
--beacon-node-api-endpoint=http://127.0.0.1:5051 \
--validator-keys=<path to keystore.json>:<path to password.txt file>

Example:

/usr/bin/teku/bin/teku voluntary-exit \
--beacon-node-api-endpoint=http://127.0.0.1:5051 \
--validator-keys=/var/lib/teku/validator_keys/keys/validator_1abc3.json:/etc/teku/validators-password.txt

Nimbus

/usr/bin/nimbus_beacon_node deposits exit --validator=<VALIDATOR_PUBLIC_KEY> --data-dir=/var/lib/nimbus

Example:

/usr/bin/nimbus_beacon_node deposits exit --validator=0x838f0247538237064e90fd8fa183400af82dd2103df885 --data-dir=/var/lib/nimbus

Prysm

$HOME/prysm/prysm.sh validator accounts voluntary-exit --wallet-dir=$HOME/.eth2validators/prysm-wallet-v2

Lodestar

Stop Lodestar validator

sudo systemctl stop validator

Run the voluntary exit command

# change directories to binary folder
cd $HOME/git/lodestar

# the voluntary exit command
./lodestar validator voluntary-exit

Restart validator

sudo systemctl restart validator

Troubleshooting: To perform a voluntary exit, make sure your consensus client (aka beacon node) is running with REST-API enabled.

Official reference documentation from each team can be found below:

• Exiting a Teku validator

• Exiting a Prysm validator

• Exiting a Nimbus validator

• Exiting a Lodestar validator

• Exiting a Lighthouse validator