66% of fees taken by the Skybridge network are rewarded to Metanode operators for helping to secure the network. These fees are paid out in BTC/WBTC and increase as the network processes more volume.
We recommend that you use a reliable serivce provider such as AWS, Scaleway or digital ocean. Your instance will need at-least the following specs:
This isnt a strict requirement. But we ask that you be available and hang around in our Metanode Discord channel. This will help us to communicate with you and keep your node up to date with the latest changes.
Skybridge is a proof-of-stake network. This means that your hosted server requires Swingby tokens to be bonded to it in order for it to be considered as a Metanode. Although there are no risks of your bonded tokens being lost, they will have to be time-locked for at-least 1 month.
Currently each bridge allows for 50 Metanodes, meaning that only the top 50 most bonded nodes will receive rewards. There is also a minimum of 150,000 Swingby tokens on the Bitcoin to Ethereum bridge and 50,000 on the Bitcoin to BSC bridge.
Before you begin setting up your Metanode, we advise that you check the Skybridge explorer to ensure that you have enough tokens to become eligible.
Head to your favourite cloud infrastrucutre provider and begin renting a server instance that matches the above hardware requirements. We recommend AWS, Digital Ocean, Scaleway, Hertzner or Vultr.
Make sure to bind a static IP address (otherwise kown as a floating IP or elastic IP) to your sever instance to prevent your IP address changing in the future. Take a note of both your static IP address and your SSH key as this will be used by the deployment bot in the following step.
To setup your Metanode deployment bot speak with Telegrams @BotFather to obtain a "BOT_TOKEN". Provided that you have both Git and Docker installed you can run the following commands:
$ export BOT_TOKEN=YOUR_BOT_TOKEN
$ git clone https://github.com/SwingbyProtocol/node-installer
$ cd node-installer
$ echo "YOUR_SSH_KEY" >> data/ssh_key
$ chmod +x scripts/install.sh && scripts/install.sh
Message your bot "/start" to begin the node deployment process. Once all of the required dependencies have been deployed to your server instance, the Metanode deployment bot will also be copied over.
Using our timelock tool, submit a transaction that locks your Swingby tokens for more than 1 month. Specify your nodes peer-to-peer key along with your Ethereum address in the transactions memo with the format "p2pKey,ethAddress".
You can obtain your p2pKey from your Metanodes startup logs or your deployment bot. The Ethereum address is the address that will receive operator rewards.
Here is an example transaction.
Once the Bitcoin node, Ethereum node and both Blockbook indexers have finished syncing, your node will be accepted into the network and will begin receiving rewards. Job done!
Make sure to join our Metanode operator discord channel so we can stay in touch.
