Do this only if you received the confirmation email from Aptos team for your eligibility. Nodes not selected will not have enough tokens to join the testnet. You can still run public fullnode in this case if you want.

Before joining the testnet, you need to bootstrap your node with the genesis blob and waypoint provided by Aptos Labs team. This will convert your node from test mode to prod mode.

• Stop your node and remove the data directory.

• Download the genesis.blob and waypoint.txt file published by Aptos Labs team.

• Pull the latest changes on testnet branch, make sure you're at commit 3b53225b5a1effcce5dee9597a129216510dc424

• Close the metrics port 9101 and REST API port 80 for your validator and fullnode

• Restarting the node

• Stop your node and remove the data volumes, docker compose down --volumes

• Download the genesis.blob and waypoint.txt file published by Aptos Labs team.

• Update your docker image to use tag testnet_3b53225b5a1effcce5dee9597a129216510dc424. Check the image sha256 here

• Close metrics port on 9101 and REST API port 80 for your validator and fullnode (remove it from the docker compose file)

• Restarting the node: docker compose up

• Increase era number in your Terraform config, this will wipe the data once applied.

• Update your docker image to use tag testnet_3b53225b5a1effcce5dee9597a129216510dc424 in the Terraform config. Check the image sha256 here

• Close metrics port and REST API port for validator and fullnode, add the helm values in your main.tf file, for example:

  module "aptos-node" {
      ...
  
      helm_values = {
          service = {
            validator = {
              enableRestApi = false
              enableMetricsPort = false
            }
          }
      }
  }
  
  

• Apply Terraform: terraform apply

• Download the genesis.blob and waypoint.txt file published by Aptos Labs team.

• Recreate the secrets, make sure the secret name matches your era number, e.g. if you have era = 3, you should replace the secret name to be ${WORKSPACE}-aptos-node-0-genesis-e3

  export WORKSPACE=<your workspace name>
  
  kubectl create secret generic ${WORKSPACE}-aptos-node-0-genesis-e2 \
      --from-file=genesis.blob=genesis.blob \
      --from-file=waypoint.txt=waypoint.txt \
      --from-file=validator-identity.yaml=validator-identity.yaml \
      --from-file=validator-full-node-identity.yaml=validator-full-node-identity.yaml
  

All the selected validator node will be receiving sufficient amount of test token (101,000,000) airdrop from Aptos Labs team to stake their node.

1. Initialize Aptos CLI

   aptos init --profile ait2 \
   --private-key <account-private-key> \
   --rest-url http://ait2.aptosdev.com \
   --faucet-url http://ait2.aptosdev.com \
   --assume-yes
   

2. Register validator candidate on chain

   aptos node register-validator-candidate \
   --profile ait2 \
   --validator-config-file aptosbot.yaml
   

   Replace aptosbot.yaml with your validator node config file.

3. Add stake to your validator node

   aptos node add-stake --amount 100000000 --profile ait2
   

   Please don't add too much stake to make sure you still have sufficient token to pay gas fee.

4. Set lockup time for your stake, minimal of 72 hours is required to join validator set.

   aptos node increase-lockup \
   --profile ait2 \
   --lockup-duration 75h
   

5. Join validator set

   aptos -- node join-validator-set --profile ait2
   

   ValidatorSet will be updated at every epoch change, which is once every hour. You will only see your node joining the validator set in next epoch. Both Validator and fullnode will start syncing once your validator is in the validator set.

You can check the details about node liveness definition here.

1. Verify that your node is connecting to other peers on testnet. (Replace 127.0.0.1 with your Validator IP/DNS if deployed on the cloud)

   curl 127.0.0.1:9101/metrics 2> /dev/null | grep "aptos_connections{.*\"Validator\".*}"
   

   The command will output the number of inbound and outbound connections of your Validator node. For example:

   aptos_connections{direction="inbound",network_id="Validator",peer_id="2a40eeab",role_type="validator"} 5
   aptos_connections{direction="outbound",network_id="Validator",peer_id="2a40eeab",role_type="validator"} 2
   

   As long as one of the metrics is greater than zero, your node is connected to at least one of the peers on the testnet.

2. You can also check if your node is connected to AptosLabs's node, replace <Aptos Peer ID> with the peer ID shared by Aptos team.

   curl 127.0.0.1:9101/metrics 2> /dev/null | grep "aptos_network_peer_connected{.*remote_peer_id=\"<Aptos Peer ID>\".*}"
   

3. Once we have enough nodes coming online to form consensus, you can also check if consensus is making progress

   curl 127.0.0.1:9101/metrics 2> /dev/null | grep "aptos_consensus_current_round"
   

   You should expect to see this number keep increasing.