1. Express interest
Email info@eraprojects.io through the existing ERA contact route. Ask for the current reviewed intake and qualification procedure.
Independent operator qualification
Become an ERA Validator
ERA runs four founder-controlled validators today. External admission requires a reviewed qualification route; technical eligibility or a bond alone does not grant an active seat.
Seven steps from interest to operation
2. Describe your operation
Provide operator experience, contact information, proposed hosting location, infrastructure, maintenance coverage, monitoring and incident arrangements. Do not send credentials or account secrets.
3. Review requirements before staking
Review the current 10,000 ETKN minimum validator self-bond, 20% maximum commission, fees, election rules and independent qualification with ERA before acquiring stake or signing.
4. Build a separate full node
Use canonical erablockchains/era-blockchain source, pinned build instructions and reviewed operator guide. Verify source and build checksums, the raw chain spec and genesis. Synchronize a separate non-validator node with its own database and no authority keys.
5. Prove reliable synchronization
Confirm the ERA genesis, peer connectivity, current runtime and advancing finalized head. Retain uptime, resource and incident evidence. Public sentry reachability from a new independent host still needs qualification.
6. Prepare independent keys and intent
Only after review, generate session keys locally on your own operator system. Follow the reviewed self-bond, session-key registration and validator-intent procedure with fresh fees and state checks. Never transmit private keys or recovery phrases.
7. Verify election and monitor
A candidacy must still be selected or admitted. Check the active validator set, session transition and finality before claiming activation. Monitor peers, disk, keys, rewards and incidents continuously.
Node and staking roles
Validator
An elected authority with independent session keys that participates in block production and finality.
Full node
A synchronized chain node without validator intent or authority keys; the recommended first operational milestone.
RPC node
A node serving client queries under reviewed exposure limits. A wallet WSS endpoint is not a peer bootnode.
Nominator
An account backing validators in staking elections. Nominated backing cannot replace a validator's own 10,000 ETKN self-bond.
Technical checks and operational recommendations
Technical checks: verify the canonical source/tag, build checksum, unchanged raw chain spec, genesis 0x0abc2c3d8db5815541050b73da4d81267ebf14d90dbee8d7258155b667ea112e, peers and advancing finality. Use the reviewed operator instructions; independent onboarding has not yet been qualified end to end. (BUILD.md, OPERATORS.md, PROVENANCE.md)
Recommendation: use a dedicated, reliable machine with SSD storage, adequate CPU/RAM, monitored free bytes and inodes, stable networking, process supervision and sustained uptime. ERA has not published a universal hardware minimum or an uptime guarantee for external operators.
Wallets connect to wss://eraprojects.org/ for client RPC. Nodes connect to reviewed peer/bootnode addresses over the peer protocol. Do not expose a local administrative RPC or copy a production validator database.
Keep independent session keys under your custody, make encrypted offline backups and test recovery. Use reviewed, checksum-verified upgrades; preserve data and keys and report incidents promptly to ERA.
Hardware & Availability
Current workload evidence: the four accepted validators reported a 14-core 13th Gen Intel i5-13500 and 64,081 MB memory. Retained service-switch logs recorded 2.9–4.7 GB memory peaks. About 377–384 GiB filesystem space remained after a net 1.8–3.0 GiB decline over about eight days. That decline includes all host writes and deletions; it is not a measured chain-database growth rate or proof of a minimum host size.
Validator starting guidance for the current ERA workload: a dedicated modern x86-64 machine in the current host performance class (roughly 12–16 capable CPU cores), 64 GiB RAM and at least 1 TiB of reliable NVMe SSD. Keep at least 250 GiB free as a planning buffer, then revise capacity from measured database and filesystem growth. This is a conservative recommendation, not an admission rule or universal minimum.
Separate non-validator full node: provision a modern 8-core CPU, 32 GiB RAM and at least 1 TiB SSD as a provisional starting allowance. It validates and retains chain state but has no authority keys or signing role. An independent end-to-end sync and peer-connectivity qualification is still needed; these figures are not a proven lower bound.
Archive node: retaining additional historical state or serving heavy indexing needs substantially more storage, sustained I/O and a retention plan. No authenticated ERA archive-node growth series or independently qualified archive build establishes a numeric minimum. Size multi-terabyte SSD capacity from a measured retention test before committing to an archive service; do not substitute a pruned full node for an archive.
Use reliable low-latency networking and reviewed peer/sentry routes, redundant connectivity where practical, UPS or equivalent power continuity, monitored CPU/RAM/SSD free space and inodes, peer count, sync lag, finalized head, process restarts and key/session status. Schedule upgrades and backups with recovery tests, and report incidents promptly. Wallet WSS is not node peer connectivity; do not expose administrative RPC.
Proposed availability target for owner review
Propose 99.9% monthly validator-service availability for owner review (at most 0.1% unavailable time, about 43.2 minutes in a 30-day month). Measure in UTC one-minute intervals from independent monitoring. Count an interval unavailable when the validator/consensus process is down, its reviewed peer connectivity is lost, or its finalized head fails to follow an advancing reference chain for more than two minutes. Planned maintenance and connectivity loss count as downtime; record chain-wide incidents separately. This is a proposed operator service target only—not an existing admission rule, on-chain slashing threshold or ERA uptime guarantee.
Rewards, commission and penalties
The deployed spec16 runtime enforces a 10,000 ETKN minimum validator self-bond and a 20% maximum commission. Commission is bounded; neither a bond nor a commission setting guarantees selection or income.
Performance and eligibility feed the custom SecurityBudget reward route. Standard staking-era payout is zero in this runtime. Read-only eligibility has been verified, but the first legitimate production reward payment has not yet been verified. Never infer a payable claim from a displayed estimate alone.
The approved penalty policy is implemented but production activation remains pending after the reward-payment gate. Operators must review its current status and incident procedure before candidacy.
Copyable expression-of-interest template
Select and copy this text into your own email. Send it to info@eraprojects.io; omit private keys, recovery phrases, passwords and server credentials.
Subject: ERA validator interest Operator / organization: Contact name and reply address: Validator and node operating experience: Proposed hosting city/region and provider: CPU, RAM, SSD capacity and network plan: Monitoring, maintenance and incident coverage: Key custody, backup and recovery approach (no secrets): Proposed timeline and questions: