3 April 2024
Embrace the Mainnet Frontier: Part 2 of the Q Blockchain Validator Onboarding Program – Your Gateway to Early Validation

This article shall provide guidance for onboarding professional, medium to high Stake-Under-Management (SUM) validators. The goal is still to further increase diversity in the validator set but at the same time aim for high network stability by these validators.

Background of Pre-Mainnet Onboarding Phase
However, when you try to build a decentralized governance framework for Web3, you have only so much time to onboard validators to the initial ecosystem which required us to focus on a few high SUM Validators.
Further, let’s not forget that Validators are not the only consensus stakeholder we have onboarded into the Q consensus. The novelty of the Q consensus are enforceable governance decisions, which Root Nodes can have on Validators to prevent activity which is not in line with the Q constitution. Of course, the more the Validator set is diversified, the more it will benefit the integrity of the system. But with the Root Nodes as an additional layer of defense on consensus level, the Q blockchain can tolerate much more levels of decentralization.

In the end, it was a typical cost-benefit choice between degree of decentralization and adhering to the timeline of a timely mainnet launch. This process of progressive decentralization has been described in Section 7.6 of the Q White Paper.
How to become an Early Mainnet Validator on the Q Blockchain
With the mainnet live and functioning since March 2022, Q is ready for a larger validator set. To enable professional validators to onboard, the steps are fairly easy:
get hands-on experience by running a Q Testnet Validator, say for a week or two: here
join the Q Discord Community Server
obtain a validator Self Stake
spin up the validator mainnet node
Note: for a setup with separate keys for stake management and node signing, read how to setup an alias account on the Q Blockchain.
after the above steps, make sure your validator stake puts you in the validator ranking between position 1 to 135. If yes, create a ticket on the Q community discord to get the Validator Node role and ask for the mainnet stats tracker secret.
connect mainnet validator with the network stats
Monitor the node, manage the validator pool, attract community delegations from QGOV Token Holders
By that professional validators can contribute to the security and robustness of the Q Blockchain by increasing and diversifying its validator set.
Happy Validating!
Frequently asked Questions
At the time of writing, the stake calculator showed a ROS of 13.7% for solo staking and 14.8% for a validation with an assumption on delegations.
Is it too late to become a validator on mainnet?
Quite the opposite. As of writing, there are 22 validators live on Q Blockchain mainnet. The goal for Q Development is to expand the validator set further. Through the Q Constitution there is a structured process for doing so. In addition to active validators, there are standby validators to ensure that a dropped validator is replaced without delay. Both receive rewards according to their self stake+delegated stake. See the whitepaper for more details.
The validator ITN targets smaller validators and provides a basic incentive to setup a node to cover the effort. The resulting mainnet tokens are obtained after multiple months of operation on the Q Blockchain testnet. In short: it takes time to become a mainnet validator and it will be of limited and small stake size.
The Validator onboarding described above provides a quick and efficient way to setup a validator node with a self-stake on the Q Blockchain mainnet, which allows for an early buildup of community delegations.
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