Next Steps

🎉 Congrats! You've finished the primary steps of setting up your validator. You're now an Ethereum staker!

⏭️ FAQ

Wen staking rewards?

Activation Queue: Once your EL+CL is synced, validator up and running, you just wait for activation. This process can take 24+ hours. Only 900 new validators can join per day. Check the queue length: https://wenmerge.com

Activated: When you're activated, your validator will begin creating and voting on blocks while earning staking rewards.

Quick monitoring: Use https://hoodi.beaconcha.in to create alerts and track your validator's performance.

Sync Timeline

Syncing the consensus client is instantaneous with checkpoint sync but the execution client can take up to a day. On nodes with fast NVME drives and gigabit internet, expect your node to be fully synced in a few hours.

How do I know I'm fully synced?

• Check your execution client's logs and compare the block number against the most recent block on https://hoodi.etherscan.io

  • Check EL logs: journalctl -fu execution

• Thanks to checkpoint sync, your consensus client's is instantly synched. You can compare the slot number against the most recent slot on https://hoodi.beaconcha.in

  • Check CL logs: journalctl -fu consensus

👍 Recommended Steps

• 🚀 Install EthPillar: your node's buddy for easy and fast node management! Update your software with a keystroke.

▶️ EthPillar Quickstart: Ubuntu One-liner Install

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coincashew/EthPillar/main/install.sh)"

• 🗞️Subscribe to your Execution Client and Consensus Client's Github repository: Be notified of new releases. Find the Github links on each EL/CL's Overview section. At your EL or CL's github page while logged in, click the Watch button > Custom > click the checkbox for "Release".

• 😄Join Community: Join the community on Discord and Reddit to discuss all things staking related.

• 🛠️Node Maintenance: Familiarize yourself with Part II - Maintenance section, as you'll need to keep your staking node running at its best.

• 📚Study EthStaker Knowledge Base: Increase your staking understanding

• 💿Backups: Review your staking validator backups!

• 🤞Finished testing? Before decommissioning your validator, it's good practice to properly exit your validator as this improves staking network health.

🏁 Optional Steps

• 🤖MEV-boost: Setup MEV-boost for extra staking rewards!
• 📊Monitoring: Setup Monitoring with Grafana and Prometheus
• ⛓️RPC: Setup using your own Node as a RPC endpoint.
• 📱Notifications: Setup Mobile App Notifications and Monitoring by beaconcha.in
• 🆙External Monitoring: Setup External Monitoring with Uptime Check by Google Cloud
• 📚Knowledge: Familiarize yourself with Part III - Tips section, as you dive deeper into staking.

☎️ Need extra live support?

• Find Ethstaker frens on the Ethstaker Discord and coincashew Discord.
• Use reddit: r/Ethstaker, or DMs, or r/coincashew

💟 Like these guides?

• Audience-funded guide: If you found this helpful, please consider supporting it directly. 🙏
• Support us on Gitcoin Grants: We build this guide exclusively by community support!

• Feedback or pull-requests: https://github.com/coincashew/coincashew

Ready for mainnet staking? Mainnet guide available here.

Last Words

I stand upon the shoulders of giants and as such, invite you to stand upon mine. Use my work with or without attribution; I make no claim of "intellectual property." My ideas are the result of countless millenia of evolution - they belong to humanity.

This is Leslie, the official mascot of Eth Staking