Validators

Atleta Full Nodes

Validator nodes are operators of dedicated machinery that runs a specialized software client responsible for maintaining accurate historic state and growing the most recent state according to the consensus rules. They are the entities that provide computational and storage resources, security to the network, and a certain degree of economic guarantees.

Validating involves running a node to actively maintain the network, either by producing blocks or ensuring the finality of the chain. In order to become a validator on ATLETA, users will have to possess some degree of systems administration experience in order to launch and maintain a validator node.

Functions

• Aggregate transactions

• Validate transactions

• Package Blocks

• Append new blocks to the chain

• Ensure proper transitions from block-to-block

• Ensure historic consistency

• Detect operational anomalies

• Protect against malicious behavior

Validator Roles

Typically, validators are tasked with the assimilation of transactions into blocks, the verification of those transactions, and the addition of new blocks to the chain. ATLETA splits the validator roles into two types of sub-roles defined by functionality, authors and publishers. The two separate the operational load and work in tandem. By splitting nodes into roles a higher degree of honest activity becomes achievable and performance is optimized.

Authors: Monitor network mempool, collect transactions, package them into blocks, and pass them on to the publishers.

Publishers: Monitor Author activities, re-validate blocks of transactions, and append them to the chain.

Validator Selection

Blockchains must leverage randomness mechanisms at every critical junction of the validator's life cycle to provide sufficient decentralization and a truly transparent and fair environment. Nominated proof of stake implements a system of blind assignments and

Validators do not know, nor can they chose which of the two roles they wish to take on. Roles are assigned and recycled randomly every 6 hour session over the course of 6 sessions. Every 36 hours, a new set of validators is elected pseudo-randomly.

Validator States & Specs

There are two states a validator can be in on ATLETA; Actives or Candidate. Both types of validators have met all the requirements for being a node; however one state earns rewards and the other patiently waits until they are included in the next Epoch.

By imposing such a state split, higher performance capabilities (due to a lowered amount active machines) and more equal reward distribution (due to weight functions that make sure all validators are at some point included and no single validator earns an uneven portion of them) becomes possible.

Candidates refers to the total pool of validators on the network. ATLETA has set a limit to support a total of up to 1,000 "Candidate Validators".

Active refers to the sub-segment of validators that are engaged in the production of new blocks. At any given moment, there can only be up to 256 validators participating in the consensus process.

Scenario

Validators are selected by pseudo-random modalities, a pre-selection by the nominators, and a weighted VRF (verifiable random function). Validators are assigned roles randomly every 6 hours, and the validator set is re-shuffled every 36 hours.