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Node Setup Guide

Running a validator node on the Watr Network contributes to the security, availability, and decentralization of the Watr blockchain infrastructure. Watr leverages Avalanche’s highly scalable consensus and subnet architecture, allowing validators to participate in both the primary Avalanche network and application-specific subnets like the Watr Identity Chain.

What is a Node?​

A node in the Watr network is a computer system that participates in the network by maintaining a copy of the blockchain, processing transactions, and communicating with other nodes. These nodes form the backbone of the Watr network, ensuring data availability and network resilience.

Types of Nodes​

  • Full Node: Maintains a complete copy of the Watr blockchain and helps distribute transaction data across the network. While not directly involved in consensus, these nodes are essential for network health and data accessibility.
  • Validator Node: A specialized full node that participates in the consensus mechanism, validating transactions and creating new blocks. These nodes are responsible for maintaining the network’s security and transaction integrity.
  • RPC (Remote Procedure Call) Node: Provides an interface for applications to interact with the Watr blockchain, enabling developers to query data and submit transactions programmatically.

About Validator Nodes​

Validator nodes are the core participants in Watr’s consensus mechanism, responsible for maintaining the network’s security and ensuring all transactions are processed correctly. They work together to reach agreement on the state of the blockchain.

Hardware and Operating Systems​

Watr is built on Avalanche architecture, which is an incredibly lightweight protocol, so nodes can run on commodity hardware.

  • CPU: Equivalent of 8 AWS vCPU
  • RAM: 8 GiB (16 GiB recommended)
  • Storage: 1 TiB SSD
  • OS: Ubuntu 22.04 or MacOS >= 12

Warning: Nodes which choose to use a HDD may get poor and random read/write latencies, therefore reducing performance and reliability. An SSD is strongly suggested.

Networking​

To run successfully, your Watr node needs to accept connections from the Internet on the network port 9651. Before you proceed with the installation, you need to determine the networking environment your node will run in. Allow TCP traffic on port 9650 from your IP so you can make API calls to your node and fetch certain information and statistics.

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This is an overview page. For detailed installation steps and commands, see the Validator Setup Guide.