Frequently Asked Questions
Anyone can run an observer node.
Very soon, Access nodes too will be permissionless and anyone will be able to run one.
For the other node types, individuals can go through an application process that involves asking about their background and experience contributing to decentralized projects. To pursue an application, please visit the Flow website here to apply.
Pending approval, new node operators will be onboarded and invited to join a webinar to meet the team and share more about how they’ll grow the community. Node Operators are invited to join and participate in Flow's Node Validator Discord channel for setup questions and network announcements.
In the long-term, anyone can run a node validator on Flow.
Please follow the instructions provided here: Generate Your Node Keys
Please follow the instructions provided here: Monitoring nodes
Flow allows nodes to join/leave the network each time a new epoch begins (roughly once per week). See Staking & Epochs for general information and Node Setup for a guide to running a new node.
All staked nodes except access nodes, have to be online at all time. A staked node, other than an access node, which is not online can cause severe degradation of network performance and will be subjected to slashing of rewards. A way to prevent this is to check your equipment meets Flow's recommended requirements, periodically checking for updates and announcements in Discord but also using a node monitoring system for when your node does go offline.
Yes, see Upcoming Sporks for the latest schedule. Currently, Flow has a Mainnet Spork and a Testnet Spork roughly every two months.
One of the reasons for a spork is to make sure all nodes update to the latest software version. Hence, you should have the latest software update as long as you are participating in each spork. However, if we do release any software update in between a Spork (e.g. an emergency patch) we will announce it on Discord.
To verify if a node is online, please setup metrics for the node.
Yes, as long as you retain the boostrap
information which includes the node staking key, networking key, IP address and port from the old node to the new.
More on this here
If you are running a node, then you most definitely have this information on your node in the file <your bootstrap dir>/public-root-information/node-infos.pub.json
. If you are not running a node, you can find this information by using a Cadence script to query the Staking Smart Contract (or check Flowscan)