Before your Validator is considered for the active set, you must fund your account with the necessary amount of FLIP, register it as a validator then signal to the chain that you want to start bidding. To fund your validator, head to the auctions (opens in a new tab) app.

Adding Funds to your Validator Node

In order to fund your account, you should use the Auctions App. You could also interact with the Smart Contract directly, but since that's ugly we'll use the Dashboard for the purposes of this tutorial.

Make sure you have FLIP in your Metamask.
Go to Chainflip Auctions page (opens in a new tab) > "My Nodes"
Connect your Metamask wallet with the FLIP
Click the button "+ Add Node" > You should see the "Register new node" modal
Enter the Validator ID you got during Generating Keys step — your Public Key(SS58)— and the amount of FLIP you want to add funds to. Click on "Add Funds"
Metamask will ask you to sign two transactions. The first one is a token approval and the second one transfers and add funds to your validator.
Congrats! You should see the new node on "My Nodes" page
Once you have successfully funded your account, jump back to your terminal and run the following:

sudo systemctl restart chainflip-engine1.3

You have not finished all the steps! Please continue to the bottom of your page otherwise your node will show as Offline

Even after you successfully added funds, your node could still be in the

Offline state. Just wait for your node to sync all the blocks.

Register Node as a Validator

sudo chainflip-cli --config-root /etc/chainflip register-account-role Validator

Rotate Keys

Registration gives your account access to Validator-specific commands on the State Chain. The first of these is rotating and registering your authorship keys:

sudo chainflip-cli --config-root /etc/chainflip rotate

Start Bidding

Now your node should be synced, your account be fully registered, your ports open, your Chainflip Engine humming along. Check the logs once more, check your node status in the web app, then crack your knuckles one more time and signal your intent to bid in the next auction:

sudo chainflip-cli --config-root /etc/chainflip start-bidding

Make sure you rotate session keys and execute the commnad to start bidding, otherwise you won't be able to join auctions and eventually join the active validator set.

Set Vanity Name

Set a Vanity Name for your validator by running:

sudo chainflip-cli --config-root /etc/chainflip vanity-name "my-cool-validator 😎"

Stop Bidding

If you want to retire a node and redeem all its funds, you will first need to signal your intent to stop bidding:

sudo chainflip-cli --config-root /etc/chainflip stop-bidding

This will ensure you don't participate in the next auction, and your funds will become unbonded. You can then redeem your funds.

Note you may not stop bidding if the auction has already begun.

Important Notes Redeeming and Retiring