Demystifying solo staking struggles by Rémy Roy | Devcon SEA

[Music] hello um let's get started um so I believe uh anyone should be able to be uh solo scking these days um my grandmother she would have been 95 this year she died 5 years ago but even her should be able to do it she was pretty good with Facebook um but um along the way she might be struggling so let's check these out solo stickers are important um we've heard a few of these before uh they're the one um uh they're the strong force keeping the original Arium EOS alive uh including decentralization credible neutrality censorship resistance so we should get more of these guys and we should be uh helping them when they need support so the first one uh where to start well um this is a good question uh discovering resources can be uh initially hard for some I had some fun this week I went on Google and I searched how to gole how to stake on ethereum and some of the resources that I got some of the page uh that I got uh were quite uh not as as I'd like um like I got a few uh a bunch of like these centralized custodial Services um which are not ideal to me um this struggle should be very easy to overcome eventually if you're uh persistent the second one I like this website called sticking. directory uh if you go there you'll see that there's 55 uh different ways of staking so uh I mean uh this can be quite overwhelming the first question you'll have to ask yourself is um do you want to put 302 e into this um and even if your answer is yes well you'll still have a ton of options so you'll have to kind of sit through some of these options learn from them uh maybe try a few of them on test net if they have the possibility if the answer is no you don't have 32 e to put into this there's a lot of other options too um so make your own research see what fits uh your use case I like this little box called D node we've seen uh we've seen it uh it's great you just plug it in it works uh but if you want to go to a different path you want to build your own machine you'll have to figure out the hardware you'll have to figure out how much memory you want to use you'll have to think about the CPU uh what kind of SSD what kind of bandwidth you have to provide this device with um we have good resources on this um I I I would like to improve the resources in terms of bandwidth because the the numbers there are quite fizzy um but this this eventually should be easy uh to resolve as well now that you've got your machine um how are you supposed to install and configure everything uh if you're a tech expert you're familiar with the common line interface this should be very easy for you if you're not I've got some great news we've now I've got a good amount of um easy to use tools with graphical user interfaces and automation so you should be using those um I'm not going to be naming names here but if uh if you want I can give you a few after the talk uh use those tools they're much easier than anything else so you've got your machine you plugged it in uh it's installed uh and it's running how do you know it it's working um one of the challenges that many people uh are having is simply accessing your client logs so getting to to reach the log and trying to figure out like what this log message mean is uh quite challenging unfortunately I wish I wish these uh these some of these Dev would make it uh easier for us to reach um but uh eventually you'll figure out that uh you're not your Note is syncing and it's um sync is completed I like this little known website called Beacon chain just go there put your validator keys in you'll see if your validator is at uh is active and working properly this one is interesting um this is probably the biggest challenge people will face um hopefully not too many not too many people will do uh networking can be quite uh challenging uh so you plug your machine in your uh home uh internet and then suddenly you can't watch Netflix anymore which is not great um some people also have are having issues like with their Zoom meeting they can connect with their colleague and meet them face to face uh networking can be quite challenging these ethereum clients they're connecting with a bunch of peers and some of the ISP uh around the worlds are giving you like the cheapest modem router combo out there so they can be uh they can be networking uh device that are uh struggling we don't have a good solution for this one if you want to talk about this please come and see me we're trying to recommend some custom router but just bridging that with the isps out there can be a very difficult debugging maintenance and updates uh can also be challenging sometimes your machine will just stop overnight uh use some of this Tool uh that I've been talking about the the tool that makes it easy to install and set up everything they often have like sections on how to debug everything requirements are changing uh you might need to upgrade your SSD so um there's a few proposal to try to keep the requirements low we should push for those uh if not we have some good guid to help you uh maintain your machine and upgrade your devices the economics around stickings are are still confusing um whenever someone comes to me and ask me like how am I uh how much API APR am I supposed to make with this I tell them 3% but I don't even know like how much I'm going to be making next year with my own validator so uh yeah if um if you are uh staking make sure that uh you have a withdrawal address if you want to get out eventually and potentially like create a um voluntary exit message so that you can send it if there's something happening to you maybe your family can send it to you uh in in your name and then you'll be able to recover the balance that's it thank you Ry so any questions for Remy how do I know that my setup is secure and won't get hacked that's a good question that's a very good question um I mean the general good practices that you would use for running a server um in any kind of context are are the ones that you'd want to follow um I initially started writing a guide on some of these system administration um good practices I I haven't completed it yet uh but like installing a firewall helps uh making sure your machine uh is kept up to date with all the um system packages is also a good uh way to get there any other question yep wait wait wait wait we have a mic for that so cool uh so I'm based in a country that has uh very high restrictions on the network like something similar to like the great firewall of China uh and like sinking and things like that can be a problem for me um do you guys have any recommendations on like whether you would use like a VPN some open source VPN or a set up your own maybe like is this something you see at all that's a good question we haven't had many users facing this uh issue but using a VPN would essentially be the way to go um setting up a VPN can be challenging if you're not a tech expert but uh maybe there's some there there's not that many uh like commercial VPN offerings that are good because you have to open ports and then they don't like having people using a bunch of these PTP connections on on these VPN but like you can buy a cheap uh VPS and then set it set up your own uh if you need help we can uh help you with that one we have time for one more quick question somebody wants well we have one hi uh are there any clients um that are most recommended for beginners can you repeat please are there any clients uh that are most recommended for beginners for what beginners uh beginners um I think all the clients are pretty good uh installing them uh can be a challenge but like like you should be really using some of these tools uh that are making this very easy to to install if if you want to talk with me afterwards I can give you a few suggestion for the tooling around it thank you he thank you Remy please welcome to the stage