Validator — frequently asked questions

A Miner runs a chainweb node plus mining software, earns STOA block rewards from proof-of-work. VPS-friendly, no NFT required. Standalone product.

A Validatoris a specific StoaChain role: a barebone server that stores and serves Ouronet infrastructure (Ouronet UI, Explorer, this Hub’s website, IPFS assets), runs a chainweb node with a public RPC endpoint, and earns from the Validator reward pool in proportion to Quintessence staked (Ouronet NFTs). Full detail: §19 Cluster roles.

You can be both on the same box, or either one alone. Pick by: do you hold NFTs? Do you have barebone hardware + public IP? If yes to both, Validator. If no NFTs but have hardware, Miner. If NFTs but no hardware, Delegate (see below).

Two operational halves of the validator reward:

• Validator Operator= runs the physical server. Doesn’t need to hold Quintessence personally — can be hired to run validators for a Delegator Entity. Hub tracks eligibility (uptime, benchmark, compliance).
• Delegator Entity = holds the Quintessence (Ouronet NFT stake) that captures validator slots. Can run hardware themselves or delegate that to someone else. Needs ≥ 10 000 Quintessence to create a Delegation ID.

Most small operators are both simultaneously: they stake their own NFTs AND run their own validator. Professional operators separate the two. See §20.

Holding the NFT gives you Quintessence (the stake unit). Quintessence alone doesn’t earn — it needs to be paired with an active validator server that meets eligibility. Think of it like running a business: the NFT is the license, the server is the shop. Without the shop the license just sits. You can either run the server yourself or delegate that role to a Validator Operator (which can be us, the Hub, or any independent operator).

Validators are disk-heavy: they serve Ouronet UI, hold IPFS content, keep a full chainweb data directory, and need predictable IOPS under concurrent load. A cheap VPS with 25-100 GB of storage runs out as the dataset grows. A high-spec VPS (500+ GB, 2× fleet CPU baseline) is technically accepted, but costs more monthly than a one-time barebone purchase pays back in ~12-18 months.

Miners don’t hit the same constraint — pure compute, minimal disk, VPS-fine. The gate only applies to the Validator role.

See §16 System requirements for authoritative floors. Short version: 2 cores / 8 GB RAM / NVMe SSD / 500+ GB / Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04, or 26.04 / dedicated public IPv4. If you’re on CGNAT, see §16.6 for the CGNAT test + the VPS-tunnel workaround (§18) that unblocks you at ~1 €/month.

Chainweb grows with use. As of current mainnet, ~30 GB total. Growth rate is block-driven, not user- driven, so predictable. A 500 GB commit gives you headroom for years under current conditions. If the network gets much busier, we’ll publish updated floor guidance; no automated pruning yet on StoaChain.

Yes — and many operators do. The constraint is dedicated public IPv4. Most EU residential fiber gives that (Romanian RCS/Digi, Orange, Vodafone all do on request). Mobile broadband / 4G / 5G does not — that’s CGNAT. If you’re behind CGNAT, either call your ISP for a public IP, or use the VPS tunnel pattern (see §18; 1 €/month, 30 min to set up).

Yes — as a Delegator Entity or Participant. You stake your NFT(s) via the Ouronet UI, which produces Quintessence attributed to your Delegation ID. Hardware-side, you delegate running the validators to someone else — either another operator or AncientHoldings’s Hub (which accepts delegation and runs validators on its own barebone fleet).

Reward comes back to your Ouronet account proportional to your Quintessence share, minus any operational slice the Validator Operator claims (typically 2-10% for Hub-managed delegation).

Daily 06:00 UTC mint: the Hub reads Quintessence from every active Delegation ID, computes slot captures, emits one on-chain TX per epoch distributing the reward pool. Your share lands in the Ouronet account linked to your Delegation ID. No manual claim — the TX settles into your account directly. Check via the Ouronet Explorer or in the Ouronet UI wallet after the mint runs.

Two. Captured slots are Quintessence-gated, not server-count-gated. 55 / 20 = 2slots (integer-truncated). Running 6 servers would give you the same reward as running 2 — the extra 4 servers’ capacity would be wasted.

To get to 3 slots you’d need 60k Quintessence. Crossing that threshold gives a better per-Quintessence reward rate too. See worked examples in §20.

Hub’s eligibility check runs daily. If your validator fails uptime or mandatory-flag compliance on epoch boundary, it’s marked ineligible for THAT epoch and the reward it would have captured goes back to the pool. Your Quintessence stake is not slashed — you just don’t earn for that day. Next epoch, if the validator is back to healthy, you earn normally again. No warmup penalty for operators who occasionally have downtime.

Short outages (minutes to hours) don’t cost you anything — peers reconnect, chainweb catches up. If you’re near epoch boundary and you’re offline long enough for Hub’s daily eligibility sweep to mark you offline, you miss that one epoch’s reward. Mitigations: UPS for the server so short power blips don’t drop it; redundant internet if you want belt-and-braces. For day-to-day residential reliability, a single fiber connection + a healthy server is enough.

Same answer as "internet down" but caused by the tunnel midpoint. VPS providers like IONOS / Hetzner / Contabo have ~99.9% uptime; a ~45-minute outage per month on average in practice. systemd auto-restarts both sides of the tunnel. If you want to minimise risk here, rent a second VPS on a different provider as a backup tunnel. Usually overkill unless you’re running many validators.

Yes. Hub has a Change host button on every node that swaps the SSH target without losing benchmark history, Stoicism accumulation, or the node identity. If the TLS cert was backed up to the Hub vault (see §5 for the cert-backup card), you can restore it to the new box. You lose the sync history on the old chainweb data (need to reseed), but identity + economics stay intact.

Rough monthly breakdown for a home barebone validator:

• Hardware amortisation (used dedicated server ~500 € / 3-year life) → ~14 €/mo
• Electricity (~100 W × 24h × 30d × 0.25 €/kWh) → ~18 €/mo
• Internet (shared with household; marginal cost near 0) → 0 €/mo
• Optional VPS tunnel (if CGNAT’d or running multiple) → 1-5 €/mo each

Realistic monthly: 30-40 € per validator at home.

Cloud alternative — rent a bare-metal from Hetzner AX line (≥ 40 €/mo) or OVH's cheaper dedicated (~30 €/mo). Whether this pencils depends on the token price + Quintessence you control.

Depends on token price + your Quintessence. We don’t make financial projections here — the reward pool math is transparent (see §20 reward formula) and the token market is the token market. Do your own math. A Custodian committing 20k Quintessence and running one validator on already-paid-for hardware typically breaks even on operational costs within a few months at current token economics; beyond that is upside. Not financial advice.

To create your own Delegation ID: 10k Quintessence minimum. To capture a validator slot: 20k. Below 20k you can still earn as a Participant by delegating to someone else’s Delegation ID (like the Hub’s pool). Running hardware with less than 20k staked through any channel gets you no slot capture — the hardware sits idle.