Running a Validator on SSV

Validators can be created to run on the SSV network or can be migrated from a currently running validator client to an SSV cluster. This section provides a simple guide of the process of running a validator on the SSV network.

New Validator

As described in the SSV New Validator Documentation, the general procedure is a two step process:

1. Generate validator keys and deposit ETH (minimum 32 ETH for a validator)
2. Register the validator to SSV and split the validator key

The first step follows the standard process for creating an Ethereum validator. The general approach is to use the ethstaker-deposit-cli to generate keys and create a deposit json, then use the Staking Launchpad to deposit the Ethereum.

The second step is the same process as migrating a validator and is covered in the next section.

Migrating a Validator

The steps involved in migrating a running validator are covered in the Migrating a validator SSV documentation.

The procedure involves connecting to the SSV Webapp and choosing a set of operators that you would like to run your validator. This will form an SSV cluster. Once a set of operators are chosen you then need to split your validator's private key into shards specific to each operator.

SSV offers a distributed key splitting mechanism which is outlined in their documentation. Anchor offers key splitting functionality also, which can be done via the anchor keysplit command.