Bonding Nym Node

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To you unbond your Nym Node means you are leaving Nym network and you will lose all your delegations (permanently). You can join again with the same identity key, however, you will start with no delegations.

Nym Mixnet operators are rewarded for their work every epoch (60 minutes). To prevent centralisation, Nym API is ran by distributed validators on Nyx blockchain.

You are asked to sign a transaction and bond your node to Nyx blockchain so that the Mixnet smart contract is able to map your nym address to your node. This allows us to create a nonce for each account and defend against replay attacks.

Before you bond your nym-node make sure you went through all the previous steps

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Do not bond your node to the API if the previous steps weren't finished. Bad connectivity, closed ports, or other poor setup will result in your node getting blacklisted.

Any new bonded node will provide only the bare minimum information: host, identity key and optionally custom port of its HTTP API - we highly recommend to set that one up to 8080. Everything else will be discovered via the self-described API for maximum flexibility. This also includes the sphinx key, meaning if the API is not exposed, the node will be unable to route any traffic.

Every operator has to make sure that their nodes self-described endpoint works, otherwise the node will be un-routable and thus won't get any rewards!

Bond via the Desktop wallet (recommended)

You can bond your nym-node via the Desktop wallet.

1. Insert bonding information

Open your wallet, and head to the Bonding page and click on Bond Button, and input your node details. Press Next.
To find out your nym-node details, run this command in your VPS:

./nym-node bonding-information --id <ID>

To get a correct host address, run this command in your VPS

echo "$(curl -4 https://ifconfig.me)"

2. Bond to correct HTTP port

In your wallet: Open the box called Show advanced options and make sure that your Custom HTTP port is set correctly like in your config.toml. We strongly recommend to keep it on default 8080. For reference these are the ports used by nym-node:

Node type	Port name	Correct port value
Mixnode	Mix port	`1789`
Mixnode	Verloc port	`1790`
Mixnode	HTTP api port (picture below)	`8080`
Gateway (entry & exit)	Mix port	`1789`
Gateway (entry & exit)	Client WS API port	`9000`

Use own ID_KEY, and Host, which can be either your IPv4 address or hostname:

3. Enter your values and sign with your node

Enter the Amount, Operating cost and Profit margin and press Next

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If you are part of Nym Delegation Program (opens in a new tab) or Service Grants Program, make sure your values are within the rules (opens in a new tab) of the programs. Operators setting up larger OP or PM than defined in the rules will be excluded from the program without prior warning!

You will be asked to run a sign command with your nym-node - copy and paste the long signature as the value of --contract-msg and sing it on your VPS:

./nym-node sign --contract-msg <PAYLOAD_GENERATED_BY_THE_WALLET>

Copy the resulting signature string and paste it into the wallet nodal, press Next and confirm the transaction:

# This is just an example, copy the one from your process
>>> The base58-encoded signature is:
2bbDJSmSo9r9qdamTNygY297nQTVRyQaxXURuomVcRd7EvG9oEC8uW8fvZZYnDeeC9iWyG9mAbX2K8rWEAxZBro1

Paste Signature

This image is just an example, copy-paste your own base58-encoded signature

Your node will now be bonded and ready to receive traffic, latest at the beginning of the next epoch (at most 1 hour).

If everything worked, you'll see your node running on the either the Sandbox testnet network explorer (opens in a new tab) or the mainnet network explorer (opens in a new tab), depending on which environment you're running.

After migration to nym-node in Mixnet smart contract, many explorers, includyng Nym explorers will not pick up value correctly. While we are working on Nym Explorer v2, we would like to invite operators to use Nym Harbourmaster (opens in a new tab) to track their nodes.

Change Settings via Desktop Wallet

In case you decide to change any settings like custom HTTP port or your host from an IP address to a hostname, don't forget to announce it to the API via changing these values in the desktop wallet.

Go back to Bonding page, click on Nym Node Settings and change the values like in this example:

Migrate to `nym-node` in Mixnet Smart Contract

From nym-wallet version 1.2.15 onward the application allows and prompts operators to migrate their gateway or mixnode to a nym-node in the Mixnet smart contract - an important step in project smoosh. To do so follow these steps:

1. Download the latest wallet from the release page (opens in a new tab)

2. Verify the binary and extract it if needed

Download hashes.json (opens in a new tab)
Open it with your text editor or print it's content with cat hashes.json
Run sha256sum <WALLET_BINARY> for example sha256sum ./nym-wallet_1.2.15_amd64.AppImage
If your have to extract it (like .tar.gz) do it

3. Open the wallet and sign in

4. Migrate!

Go to Bonding and you will be prompted with such message:

In case you for some reason didn't see the prompt or you closed it - you can click in the upper right corner of the same window on this button:

Confirm the transaction

5. Welcome to new episode of `nym-node`!

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Versions older than nym-wallet v 1.2.15 will not allow bonding new nodes.

Bond via the CLI (power users)

If you want to bond your Mix Node via the CLI, then check out the relevant section in the Nym CLI (opens in a new tab) docs.

WSS & Reverse Proxy Nyx Validator Setup