Validators and Validator Roles
Overview
Validators are essential participants in the GenLayer network. They are responsible for validating transactions and maintaining the integrity and security of the blockchain. Validators play a crucial role in the Optimistic Democracy consensus mechanism, ensuring that both deterministic and non-deterministic transactions are processed correctly.
Key Responsibilities
- Transaction Validation: Validators verify the correctness of transactions proposed by the leader, using mechanisms like the Equivalence Principle for non-deterministic operations.
- Leader Selection: Validators participate in the process of randomly selecting a leader for each transaction, ensuring fairness and decentralization.
- Consensus Participation: Validators cast votes on proposed transaction outcomes, contributing to the consensus process.
- Staking and Incentives: Validators stake tokens to earn the right to validate transactions and receive rewards based on their participation and correctness.
Validator Selection and Roles
- Leader Validator: For each transaction, a leader is randomly selected among the validators. The leader is responsible for executing the transaction and proposing the result to other validators.
- Consensus Validators: Other validators assess the leader's proposed result and vote to accept or reject it based on predefined criteria.
Becoming a Validator
- Staking Requirement: Participants must stake a certain amount of tokens to become validators.
- Validator Configuration: Validators must configure their nodes with the appropriate LLM providers and models, depending on the network's requirements.
- Reputation and Slashing: Validators must act honestly to avoid penalties such as slashing of their staked tokens.