Running a
Sunima Chain Validator

This guide walks you through setting up a full validator node on the Sunima Chain testnet — a sovereign Cosmos SDK + CometBFT chain. Validators propose and sign blocks, earn staking rewards, and form the decentralised foundation of the network.

curl -fsSL https://sunima.uk/install/operator.sh | ROLE=cpu bash

curl -fsSL https://sunima.uk/install/kit-update.sh | sudo bash -s -- --install

1. What your node does

A Sunima Chain validator node runs the full Cosmos SDK application state machine and the CometBFT consensus engine. It:

• Receives and validates transactions from the mempool
• Participates in BFT consensus rounds — proposing and pre-voting blocks
• Signs committed blocks with its consensus key (ed25519)
• Earns staking rewards proportional to bonded stake

A BFT chain needs at least four validators to tolerate one Byzantine fault. With a healthy multi-validator set the chain keeps producing blocks even if some validators go offline.

2. System requirements

Sunima has three node tiers. Each plays a different role and has different hardware needs.

Tier 1 — Validator

Participates in BFT consensus. Proposes and signs blocks (ed25519 — pure CPU work, no GPU needed). Runs the CURARE rule-based runtime sensor alongside the chain daemon. This is the role that secures the network.

Tier 2 — GPU Worker (intake closed)

Performs encrypted computation off-chain and signs attestations. Not part of consensus. These workers are protocol-operated and are not currently a paid role: the gas-fee split pays burn, the validator set, and the protocol treasury — it has no compute channel, so accelerator hardware earns no fee income on this network. We are not asking anyone to buy a card against revenue that does not exist, so this tier is not open for applications. Tier 1 below is open and needs no GPU.

Tier 3 — RPC / Full Node

Serves API requests (read-only queries: balances, history, staking info). Keeps a full copy of chain history. Not a validator — does not participate in consensus, does not sign blocks, no stake required. Useful for integrators (wallets, exchanges, block explorers) and the wider community.

Tier comparison: Tier 1 (Validator) is the only tier with stake, slashing, and staking rewards — and the only tier the gas-fee split pays. Tier 2 (GPU Worker) is protocol-operated and earns nothing from fees; intake is closed. Tier 3 (RPC) operates on volunteer or service-provider basis (no native rewards). On testnet all tokens are non-transferable test tokens with no monetary value.

3. Downloads

The installer above does all of this for you. The steps below are for a manual setup.

curl -LO https://sunima.uk/chain/sunimad-linux-amd64
curl -LO https://sunima.uk/chain/sunimad-linux-amd64.sha256
sha256sum -c sunimad-linux-amd64.sha256
curl -LO https://sunima.uk/chain/genesis.json

The binary links the privacy-core library libkzg_ffi.so (macOS: libkzg_ffi.dylib). Put it in /usr/local/lib and run ldconfig.

Signed releases

Every network upgrade ships as a signed release: https://sunima.uk/chain/upgrades/<name>/manifest.json lists the sha256 of each file, and manifest.json.sig is its Ed25519 signature by the Sunima release key:

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MCowBQYDK2VwAyEAhiLCLBA8nfNEqO/ui0d+avp8TrtyN8fCYg5vOkP6JJQ=
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----

# save the key above as release.pub.pem, then (OpenSSL 3):
openssl pkeyutl -verify -pubin -inkey release.pub.pem -rawin \
  -in manifest.json -sigfile manifest.json.sig

4. Initialise

Replace my-validator with your preferred moniker (display name).

chmod +x sunimad-linux-amd64 && mv sunimad-linux-amd64 sunimad
./sunimad init my-validator --chain-id sunima_8081-2
cp genesis.json ~/.sunima/config/genesis.json

5. Configure

Peer — ~/.sunima/config/config.toml

SEED="[email protected]:26656"
sed -i "s|^persistent_peers = .*|persistent_peers = \"$SEED\"|" ~/.sunima/config/config.toml

The current peer list is always at /install/peers.txt.

State sync

A new node joins from a recent snapshot, not from genesis (replaying from block 1 is not supported):

RPC=https://sunima.uk/chain-rpc
H=$(curl -s $RPC/block | python3 -c "import json,sys;print(int(json.load(sys.stdin)['result']['block']['header']['height'])//1000*1000-2000)")
HASH=$(curl -s "$RPC/block?height=$H" | python3 -c "import json,sys;print(json.load(sys.stdin)['result']['block_id']['hash'])")
C=~/.sunima/config/config.toml
sed -i "/^\[statesync\]/,/^\[/ s|^enable = .*|enable = true|" $C
sed -i "s|^rpc_servers = .*|rpc_servers = \"https://sunima.uk:443/chain-rpc/,https://sunima.uk:443/chain-rpc/\"|" $C
sed -i "s|^trust_height = .*|trust_height = $H|; s|^trust_hash = .*|trust_hash = \"$HASH\"|" $C

6. Start the node

Run it under Cosmovisor:

export DAEMON_NAME=sunimad DAEMON_HOME=~/.sunima
export DAEMON_ALLOW_DOWNLOAD_BINARIES=false UNSAFE_SKIP_BACKUP=true
cosmovisor init ./sunimad
cosmovisor run start --minimum-gas-prices=1000000000asuna

Cosmovisor on its own does not switch Sunima nodes at an upgrade height (it cannot read the node's height through the binary's startup warning). The switch is done by sunima-upgrade-switch: when the node halts at the upgrade height it checks the staged binary against the signed release manifest, points cosmovisor/current at it and restarts the node. The installer sets it up, together with a 10-minute timer that stages each scheduled upgrade into ~/.sunima/cosmovisor/upgrades/<name>/bin/sunimad ahead of time. On a node set up by hand, or by an older installer, run once:

curl -fsSL https://sunima.uk/install/kit-update.sh | sudo bash -s -- --install

Wait until catching_up is false before you bond:

curl -s http://localhost:26657/status | python3 -m json.tool | grep -E "latest_block_height|catching_up"

7. Become a validator

The installer script handles the entire validator lifecycle automatically: it downloads the binary and native library, installs genesis and the confidential-layer artifacts, seeds peers, creates your account key, requests a starter stake from the on-chain faucet, registers the operator, submits create-validator, and starts the node in the background.

curl -fsSL https://sunima.uk/install/operator.sh | ROLE=cpu bash

The script prints your sunima1… address and a 24-word mnemonic when done.

7a. Starter stake — automatic

The installer requests your starter stake from the on-chain faucet automatically and waits for it to confirm before bonding. No manual request is needed. The faucet is rate-limited per network address.

7b. Manual create-validator (advanced)

The installer already submits this for you. If you configured the node by hand and want to bond manually, run (replace my-key with the key name you chose):

./sunimad tx staking create-validator validator.json \
  --from=my-key \
  --keyring-backend=test \
  --chain-id=sunima_8081-2 \
  --node=http://localhost:26657 \
  --gas=300000 \
  --gas-prices=2000000000asuna \
  --yes

After one block your validator appears on the Network page with status Bonded.

8. Monitoring

Check your node's sync status and peer count via the local RPC:

# Sync status
curl -s http://localhost:26657/status | python3 -m json.tool | grep -E "latest_block_height|catching_up"

# Peer count
curl -s http://localhost:26657/net_info | python3 -m json.tool | grep n_peers

The live network dashboard shows all bonded validators, block height, and stake in real time:

sunima.uk/network →

9. Troubleshooting