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Operating a Voting Service Provider (VSP)

Overview

VSPs play a crucial role in the ExchangeCoin infrastructure, making proof-of-stake participation much more accessible to average users. Increasing the number of VSPs promotes decentralization, improves the stability of the ExchangeCoin network, and offers stakeholders more options.

This high-level guide outlines how to set up a VSP and the steps required to list a VSP on excc.co and in the Exilibrium wallet. The guide is intentionally written at a high level and with minimal details, as a degree of system admin experience is assumed for VSP operators.

Operator Requirements

  • Familiarity with Linux system administration, e.g., configuring and running nginx, ssh, IPSec, duplicity, monit
  • Experience with compiling from source, setting up, and maintaining exccd and exccwallet
  • Effective communication skills in English
  • Willingness to stay connected with the ExchangeCoin community for essential news and updates
  • Availability to update VSP binaries when new releases are rolled out
  • Ideally, operators should be pairs of individuals or larger groups, such as corporate entities, to prevent extended outages during the unavailability of a single person

VSP Requirements

To configure a VSP, several requirements must be met:

  • A minimum of one machine to host the web front end, handling web connections from VSP users.
  • At least three machines to host voting wallets. This is necessary because at least one voting wallet needs to be connected to the network and ready to vote at all times.
  • Each voting wallet should be connected to a dedicated local instance of exccd.
  • The physical or virtual machines hosting the configuration must be spread across 3 or more separate locations.
  • Specifically, voting wallets must be in 3+ physically distinct locations.
  • The web frontend must have an IP address different from the voting wallets and is ideally situated in another physical location.
  • Source code for the VSP is accessible on GitHub and binaries must be compiled from the source.
  • The VSP must operate on testnet for 1 week to ensure proper functionality. Uptime and the number of votes made versus missed will be monitored.
  • The VSP must run on mainnet in test mode (no public access) until a VSP operator demonstrates that they have successfully voted 1 ticket of their own using the VSP.
  • The operator must implement an adequate monitoring solution, ideally with alerts for server downtime and application error logging.

Further Information

For more detailed instructions on setting up a VSP, visit GitHub’s vspd repo. For additional support, contact the ExchangeCoin community.