Pause and reactivate a Validator

How to pause an active Validator, and reactivate a paused validator node.

Prerequisites

An Autonity Go Client registered as a validator in an active state.
A running instance of aut for submitting transactions from your account configured as described in Submit a transaction with Autonity CLI.
Your validator’s validator’s treasury account is funded with auton to pay for transaction gas costs.

Considerations for validator pausing and reactivation

See the Validator section for an explanation of the validator, a description of the validator lifecycle, and validator pausing.

Note for validator’s pausing to exit consensus committee selection:

the pause and reactivation of a validator will become effective at the end of the current epoch (i.e. the epoch in which the pause transaction is processed). The change in validator state is applied before the committee is selected for the following epoch is selected, ensuring that the validator is either ignored (if paused) or included (if reactivated).
after pausing a validator should stay online for at least 120 blocks (i.e. ~2 minutes) after current epoch end. This is so the validator is able to respond to any AFD accusation against the validator for the latest epoch.

Pause as a validator

To pause a validator from an active to a paused, inactive state, use the validator command pause. Specify:
- --validator: <VALIDATOR_IDENTIFIER_ADDRESS> of the validator node you are pausing.
```
aut validator pause --validator <VALIDATOR_IDENTIFIER_ADDRESS> | aut tx sign - | aut tx send -
```
You will be prompted for your passphrase for the key file. Having entered the password, the transaction hash will be returned on success.

You should see something like beneath. In this example the validator node with identifier 0x49454f01a8F1Fbab21785a57114Ed955212006be is paused. The returned hash is 0x942328...baec2d20:
```
aut validator pause --validator 0x49454f01a8F1Fbab21785a57114Ed955212006be | aut tx sign - | aut tx send -
(consider using 'KEYFILEPWD' env var).
Enter passphrase (or CTRL-d to exit):
0x942328bea54a0096ca9b2fb88acd337c883f7923c2ef6b8290a340c5baec2d20
```

(Optional) To verify the validator is paused, use the validator command info to submit a call to query for validator metadata. It will return the validator metadata from system state, including the validator status:

aut validator info --validator <VALIDATOR_IDENTIFIER_ADDRESS>

This will return a Validator object. The state property will be 1 (paused). You should see something like this:

aut validator info --validator 0x49454f01a8F1Fbab21785a57114Ed955212006be
{
    "treasury": "0xd4EdDdE5D1D0d7129a7f9C35Ec55254f43b8E6d4",
    "addr": "0x49454f01a8F1Fbab21785a57114Ed955212006be",
    "enode": "enode://c746ded15b4fa7e398a8925d8a2e4c76d9fc8007eb8a6b8ad408a18bf66266b9d03dd9aa26c902a4ac02eb465d205c0c58b6f5063963fc752806f2681287a915@51.89.151.55:30304",
    "commission_rate": 1000,
    "bonded_stake": 0,
    "total_slashed": 0,
    "liquid_contract": "0x109F93893aF4C4b0afC7A9e97B59991260F98313",
    "liquid_supply": 0,
    "registration_block": 3505,
    "state": 1
}

Re-activate a validator

To resume a validator from an inactive state (paused or jailed) to an active state, use the validator command activate. Specify:
- --validator: <VALIDATOR_IDENTIFIER_ADDRESS> of the validator node you are pausing.
```
aut validator activate --validator <VALIDATOR_IDENTIFIER_ADDRESS> | aut tx sign - | aut tx send -
```
You will be prompted for your passphrase for the key file. Having entered the password, the transaction hash will be returned on success.

You should see something like beneath. In this example the validator node with identifier 0x49454f01a8F1Fbab21785a57114Ed955212006be is re-activated. The returned hash is 0x0849c0...f1eb2a5b:
```
aut validator activate --validator 0x49454f01a8F1Fbab21785a57114Ed955212006be | aut tx sign - | aut tx send -
(consider using 'KEYFILEPWD' env var).
Enter passphrase (or CTRL-d to exit):
0x0849c0307bc446bb3fbb61b5c1518847574356aedb0b986248158d36f1eb2a5b
```

(Optional) To verify the validator is re-activated, use the validator command info to submit a call to query for validator metadata. It will return the validator metadata from system state, including the validator status:

aut validator info --validator <VALIDATOR_IDENTIFIER_ADDRESS>

This will return a Validator object. The state property will be 0 (active). You should see something like this:

aut validator info --validator 0x49454f01a8F1Fbab21785a57114Ed955212006be
{
    "treasury": "0xd4EdDdE5D1D0d7129a7f9C35Ec55254f43b8E6d4",
    "addr": "0x49454f01a8F1Fbab21785a57114Ed955212006be",
    "enode": "enode://c746ded15b4fa7e398a8925d8a2e4c76d9fc8007eb8a6b8ad408a18bf66266b9d03dd9aa26c902a4ac02eb465d205c0c58b6f5063963fc752806f2681287a915@51.89.151.55:30304",
    "commission_rate": 1000,
    "bonded_stake": 0,
    "total_slashed": 0,
    "liquid_contract": "0x109F93893aF4C4b0afC7A9e97B59991260F98313",
    "liquid_supply": 0,
    "registration_block": 3505,
    "state": 0
}