[Epic] 4.3: Gnosis chain validators

[ahhda]

Epic label: E:4.3 Gnosis chain validators
Planned start date: 06/05/2024
Due date: 06/06/2024

Summary

We have around 12000 idle GNO in the Treasury. A CIP was passed recently which allows the Core Team to run Gnosis Chain validators with the idle GNO. This will generate additional revenue for CoW and also help the Gnosis ecosystem.

We have around 6709 GNO in the GC treasury and rest are locked in stakewise + in a pool of GNO-CoW. More info is in the Karpatkey report.

Acceptance Criteria

• Gnosis Chain validators are running and attesting blocks with >90% attestation rate
• IaC to launch and setup more nodes
• Slashing protection via tools like Web3Signer
• Monitoring/alerts for when nodes go down

Tasks

• research: cloud pricing, hardware choice, client choice
• research: Finance and accounting structure (rewards address, signing etc.)
• Setting up the first server and accessing bandwidth/peak CPU consumption
• Ansible playbook for setting up the server
• Access to servers for team members and documentation on how to manage the node
• Monitoring, observability and alerts

Updates

Choice of hardware

We would be running the validators on OVHcloud which gives us baremetal servers at a good rate ($100-$200/mo) and unlimited bandwidth.

Advance-1 Gen 2
Intel Xeon-E 2386G - 6c/12t - 3.5 GHz/4.7 GHz
64 GB ECC 3200 MHz
2×960 GB SSD NVMe
1 Gbit/s unmetered bandwidth

Software and validator clients

• Ubuntu Server 24.04
• Docker
• Consensus client - Nimbus
• Execution client - Erigon (pruned)
• Web3Signer (requires Postgres)
• Prometheus pushgateway
• Ansible playbooks for configuration management

[ahhda]

Questions

• We need to generate the validator keys. Do we use the Wagyu Key Gen or Command Line Tool? Can this be done by anyone?
• Who makes the deposit? Should we start with a small deposit first?
• What would be the Safe address to use for withdrawal + fee recipient?

[fleupold]

Can this be done by anyone?

Anyone with access to the seed phrase (which I think we should put under restricted access in 1Password)

Who makes the deposit?

The Safe that holds the tokens

Who makes the deposit? Should we start with a small deposit first?

Yes, let's start with 100 validators then increase

What would be the Safe address to use for withdrawal + fee recipient?

To confirm with Luis but likely the Safe from which the funds are coming from