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Finality Provider

1. Overview​

The Finality Provider Daemon is responsible for monitoring for new Babylon blocks, committing public randomness for the blocks it intends to provide finality signatures for, and submitting finality signatures.

The daemon can manage and perform the following operations for multiple finality providers:

  1. Creation and Registration: Creates and registers finality providers to Babylon.
  2. EOTS Randomness Commitment: The daemon monitors the Babylon chain and commits EOTS public randomness for every Babylon block each finality provider intends to vote for. The commit intervals can be specified in the configuration. The EOTS public randomness is retrieved through the finality provider daemon's connection with the EOTS daemon.
  3. Finality Votes Submission: The daemon monitors the Babylon chain and produces finality votes for each block each maintained finality provider has committed to vote for.

The daemon is controlled by the fpd tool. The fpcli tool implements commands for interacting with the daemon.

2. Configuration​

The fpd init command initializes a home directory for the finality provider daemon. This directory is created in the default home location or in a location specified by the --home flag.

fpd init --home /path/to/fpd/home/

After initialization, the home directory will have the following structure

ls /path/to/fpd/home/
  ├── fpd.conf # Fpd-specific configuration file.
  ├── logs     # Fpd logs

If the --home flag is not specified, then the default home directory will be used. For different operating systems, those are:

  • MacOS ~/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Fpd
  • Linux ~/.Fpd
  • Windows C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Fpd

Below are some important parameters of the fpd.conf file.

Note: The configuration below requires to point to the path where this keyring is stored KeyDirectory. This Key field stores the key name used for interacting with the consumer chain and will be specified along with the KeyringBackend field in the next step. So we can ignore the setting of the two fields in this step.

[Application Options]
# RPC Address of the EOTS Daemon
EOTSManagerAddress = 127.0.0.1:12582

# RPC Address of the Finality Provider Daemon
RpcListener = 127.0.0.1:12581

[babylon]
# Name of the key to sign transactions with
Key = <finality-provider-key-name>

# Chain id of the chain to connect to
# Please verify the `ChainID` from the Babylon RPC node https://rpc.testnet3.babylonchain.io/status
ChainID = bbn-test-3

# RPC Address of Babylon node
RPCAddr = http://127.0.0.1:26657

# GRPC Address of Babylon node
GRPCAddr = https://127.0.0.1:9090

# Directory to store keys in
KeyDirectory = /path/to/fpd/home

To see the complete list of configuration options, check the fpd.conf file.

Additional Notes:

If you encounter any gas-related errors while performing staking operations, consider adjusting the GasAdjustment and GasPrices parameters. For example, you can set:

GasAdjustment = 1.5
GasPrices = 0.002ubbn

3. Add key for the consumer chain​

The finality provider daemon requires the existence of a keyring that contains an account with Babylon token funds to pay for transactions. This key will be also used to pay for fees of transactions to the consumer chain.

Use the following command to add the key:

fpd keys add --key-name my-finality-provider --chain-id bbn-test-3

Note: Please verify the chain-id from the Babylon RPC node https://rpc.testnet3.babylonchain.io/status

After executing the above command, the key name will be saved in the config file created in step.

4. Starting the Finality Provider Daemon​

You can start the finality provider daemon using the following command:

fpd start --home /path/to/fpd/home

If the --home flag is not specified, then the default home location will be used.

This will start the Finality provider RPC server at the address specified in fpd.conf under the RpcListener field, which has a default value of 127.0.0.1:12581. You can change this value in the configuration file or override this value and specify a custom address using the --rpc-listener flag.

This will also start all the registered finality provider instances except for slashed ones added in step. To start the daemon with a specific finality provider instance, use the --btc-pk flag followed by the hex string of the BTC public key of the finality provider (btc_pk_hex) obtained in step.

fpd start

2024-02-08T18:43:00.705008Z info successfully connected to a remote EOTS manager {"address": "127.0.0.1:12582"}
2024-02-08T18:43:00.712995Z info Starting FinalityProviderApp
2024-02-08T18:43:00.716682Z info RPC server listening {"address": "127.0.0.1:12581"}
2024-02-08T18:43:00.716979Z info Finality Provider Daemon is fully active!

All the available CLI options can be viewed using the --help flag. These options can also be set in the configuration file.

5. Create and Register a Finality Provider​

We create a finality provider instance through the fpcli create-finality-provider or fpcli cfp command. The created instance is associated with a BTC public key which serves as its unique identifier and a Babylon account to which staking rewards will be directed. Note that if the --key-name flag is not specified, the Key field of config specified in step will be used.

fpcli create-finality-provider \
    --key-name my-finality-provider \
    --chain-id bbn-test-3 \
    --commission 0.05 \
    --moniker "your_finality_provider_name_here" \
    --identity "your_keybase_username_or_identifier_here" \
    --website "your_website_here" \
    --security-contact "your_security_contact_email_here" \
    --details "your_other_details_here"

{
    "babylon_pk_hex": "02face5996b2792114677604ec9dfad4fe66eeace3df92dab834754add5bdd7077",
    "btc_pk_hex": "d0fc4db48643fbb4339dc4bbf15f272411716b0d60f18bdfeb3861544bf5ef63",
    "description": {
        "moniker": "my-name"
    },
    "status": "CREATED"
}

We register a created finality provider in Babylon through the fpcli register-finality-provider or fpcli rfp command. The output contains the hash of the Babylon finality provider registration transaction.

fpcli register-finality-provider \
  --btc-pk d0fc4db48643fbb4339dc4bbf15f272411716b0d60f18bdfeb3861544bf5ef63
{
  "tx_hash": "800AE5BBDADE974C5FA5BD44336C7F1A952FAB9F5F9B43F7D4850BA449319BAA"
}

A finality provider instance will be initiated and start running right after the finality provider is successfully registered in Babylon.

We can view the status of all the running finality providers through the fpcli list-finality-providers or fpcli ls command. The status field can receive the following values:

  • CREATED: The finality provider is created but not registered yet
  • REGISTERED: The finality provider is registered but has not received any active delegations yet
  • ACTIVE: The finality provider has active delegations and is empowered to send finality signatures
  • INACTIVE: The finality provider used to be ACTIVE but the voting power is reduced to zero
  • SLASHED: The finality provider is slashed due to malicious behavior
fpcli list-finality-providers
{
    "finality-providers": [
        ...
        {
            "babylon_pk_hex": "02face5996b2792114677604ec9dfad4fe66eeace3df92dab834754add5bdd7077",
            "btc_pk_hex": "d0fc4db48643fbb4339dc4bbf15f272411716b0d60f18bdfeb3861544bf5ef63",
            "description": {
                "moniker": "my-name"
            },
            "last_vote_height": 1
            "status": "REGISTERED"
        }
    ]
}