Migrate validator

Migrate your validator to another machine

1. install the testnet on your new server

2. Confirm that you have the recovery seed phrase information for the active key running on the old machine

backup your key

lavad keys export mykey

This prints the private key that you can then paste into the file mykey.backup

get list of keys

lavad keys list

3. Recover the active key of the old machine on the new machine

This can be done with the mnemonics

lavad keys add mykey --recover

Or with the backup file mykey.backup from the previous step

lavad keys import mykey mykey.backup

4. Wait for the new full node on the new machine to finish catching-up

To check synchronization status

lavad status 2>&1 | jq .SyncInfo

catching_up should be equal to false

5. After the new node has caught-up, stop the validator node

To prevent double signing, you should stop the validator node before stopping the new full node to ensure the new node is at a greater block height than the validator node If the new node is behind the old validator node, then you may double-sign blocks

Stop and disable service on old machine

sudo systemctl stop lavad
sudo systemctl disable lavad

The validator should start missing blocks at this point

6. Stop service on new machine

sudo systemctl stop lavad

7. Move the validator's private key from the old machine to the new machine

Private key is located in: ~/.lavad/config/priv_validator_key.json

After being copied, the key priv_validator_key.json should then be removed from the old node's config directory to prevent double-signing if the node were to start back up

sudo mv ~/.lavad/config/priv_validator_key.json ~/.lavad/bak_priv_validator_key.json

8. Start service on a new validator node

sudo systemctl start lavad

The new node should start signing blocks once caught-up

9. Make sure your validator is not jailed

To unjail your validator

lavad tx slashing unjail --chain-id $LAVA_CHAIN_ID --from mykey --gas=auto -y