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Becoming a Validator

Validators are the attesting layer of the Notareum protocol. They approve or reject verification requests, earn NOTA from fee distribution, and put stake at risk through slashing if they misbehave. This guide walks through tier selection, stake deposit, daily limits, and reward mechanics.

Requirements at a glance

Higher tiers attest more per day and capture a larger share of the fee pool, but expose more stake to slashing. Pick the tier your operational risk appetite supports. Full economics are on the Staking and Tiers page.

Prerequisites

  • An Ethereum account funded with enough NOTA for the tier you target.
  • Native gas for a handful of transactions (approval, stake, later unstake).
  • A service or script that subscribes to VerificationRequested events and submits attestations programmatically. Validators who attest manually will not survive at higher tiers.

Step 1: Acquire NOTA

Acquire NOTA on the primary listed DEX/CEX pairs (see Resources for links to official trading venues). Send the tokens to the operator account you plan to use for attestation.

Step 2: Approve the staking contract

Step 3: Stake

Tier is assigned automatically by the contract based on total staked NOTA. If you add more later, your tier bumps up; you never need to re-stake.

Step 4: Verify your tier

On a fresh stake, isActive becomes true immediately and slashCount is 0.

Step 5: Run a notary service

Subscribe to VerificationRequested events, fetch the referenced .nota file, run your policy checks, and submit attestations:
Your policy must remain consistent with the quorum’s. Voting against the eventual majority on a resolved request is what triggers slashing; see Slashing.

Daily verification limits

Each tier has a daily attestation budget. The contract enforces it atomically per UTC day:
Institutional is unlimited. For other tiers, a validator that exceeds the daily cap cannot attest again until the next UTC midnight.

Rewards

Attesting with the majority accrues your share of the verification fee pool, multiplied by the tier multiplier. Rewards are distributed in epochs by the FeeManager; see Fee Model for exact math.

Exiting

Call unstake(), wait out the 14-day unbonding window, then call claimStake():
During unbonding, you earn no rewards and cannot attest. Pending slashes still apply to unbonding stake.

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