Secure Nodes

Tracking & Payment System: Beta(mainnet)


About

Secure Nodes employ encrypted communication to other nodes and wallets. They also are intended to provide services to applications like mobile wallets at a later time.

Each of the Secure Nodes connect to this system which tracks the state of the node. This server helps ensure a healthy network by periodically sending challenges to nodes to prove capability. The tracking system is completely independent of any Horizen transaction processing. It provides a means for node operators to share a small portion of the block generation rewards.

Payments based on a 10.0% percentage of the mined block reward are split between all Secure Nodes that adhere to the criteria below.

Situations such as down time, low stake balance and other exceptions are factored into the payment.

For more information visit horizen.global

Secure Node Criteria

Each of the following criteria must be met and maintained for a Secure Node to be eligible to recieve a share of the reward pool.These items may be added to or modified at any time. Criteria may change at any time.

  • Must maintain a balance of at least 42 ZEN in a 'stake' transparent address
  • Stake address must be only used for one node across both Secure and Super Node systems
  • Must be available with minimal exception time for at least 92% of an earning period (approx. 1 day)
  • Must not restrict peer connections (no maxconnection=) by allowing public connections on the configured zen port (default 9033)
  • Must maintain a valid public SSL cert properly configured for zen
  • Must not fall behind the current block height by more than 4 blocks
  • Must update to current versions of the zen and/or tracker software within the posted time frame
  • Must dedicate the host for the sole use as a Secure Node and provision the required level of resources (CPU, RAM/SWAP, Disk space) to consistently meet the eligibility criteria
  • Must not add, or utilise additional transparent addresses, except for approved applications

 

Note: only one public Ip address is needed per secure node tracker (IPv4 or IPv6). The node tracker must match the zend ip address.

 

General Secure Node expectations:

 

  • Maintain the full block chain
  • Run on a secured system (firewall, restricted logins, etc.)
  • Keep the node OS updated, patched
  • Periodically check for notices of updates, issues, etc.

 

Earnings

An earning period is based upon block time. It is the amount of time between 572 blocks which is approximately 24 hours. When an earning period ends each active node is checked and any node with exceptions or downtime causing the node to be available less than 92% of the earning period is excluded from the earnings pool. A node with greater than 92% availability but with some downtime or exceptions will have the amount of time subtracted from their allocation. These small subtractions help offset the fees incurred with making the payments.

A payment administrator on a weekly basis reviews the earnings to ensure they were generated correctly and marks them to be paid.

Funds are then transferred to a payment address and the payment is made to each node's stake address. No funds are stored on the server. 

Challenges

Challenges are no longer issued or required as of September 26, 2023..

Certificates

A certificate issued by a Certificate Authority(CA) such as Let's Encrypt must be configured for a Secure Node. Even though zen is capable of using a self-signed cert, a CA issued cert is required to participate in the payments. The tracking server checks the hostname via DNS and verifies the certificate. It will first try a direct connection with a node and if there are connection issues it will check peer connections for a verified TLS connection.

Exceptions

Exceptions are logged and tracked when a node does not comply with the criteria listed above. Exceptions are listed on the Details page of a node. There should be only one Exception open at a time even if there are multiple conditions that may apply. When an Exception is closed an End time is present in the Exception. The duration of time an exception is open counts toward the uptime earnings calcuation.

 

Setting Up a Secure Node

Comprehensive installation and maintenance guides are available:

Installation Guide

Maintenance Guide

 

Attributions

All grid tables are provided by jqgrid under a non-commecial CC BY-NC 3.0 license.