Westend validator

Validating Nominating
#1

Hello Polkadot community, I hope you a happy new year !
Today, I have a little request to ask you:

  • Question:
    I would like to know if there are any ways for me to become an active validator on the testnet?
    Or are there any alternatives that I could do to “simulate” an actual validation process on my node.

  • Background:
    For the past couple of weeks I have been testing my testnet validator node to ensure the availability and mesure the performance of my node.
    However, it looks like all the validator slots are taken and so I cannot simulate my actual performance as a validator. Therefore, I am looking for a workaround that could help me evaluate my node.

Thank you very much for your help !

#2

Hey @minijap happy new year to you too! thanks for your question and welcome to the forum.

So my understanding is Westend is permissionless to run validators, like Kusama and Polkadot. You can create a validator using polkadot.js UI in the same way you would create one on the live networks. You’d just need nominator backing to qualify to be in the active set. If you need more information, please refer to this blog post from Polkadot blog.

If you want to work around having to find nominators, you could always create your own substrate-based chain and deploy your validator on that; there’s a step-by-step guide here.

Good luck! Let us know if you have any other questions.