KingSuper Validator Profile

Before I start, I want to congrats @bill0 and other team memebers on being so close to launch mainnet :smiley:

I want to just point out that I am running for those 3 community seats, I know the competition to acquire those will be tough. But I will try to give my bets shot !

Team / Company / DAO

Hi I am KingSuper, I am a software architect working in India’s biggest e-commerce company (It’s like Indian Amazon). Being a architect I am also familiar with most of technical stuff and am easily able to debug anything or create something new :sunglasses:

I am accompanied by my brother and one friend who are also Software Developers. Together we look over 17 networks.

Our experience working in a production environment with Big MNCs comes handy while running validators. We know exactly how to manage production systems, take backups or setup alerts calls to not miss issues.

Experience

I have a vast experience running infrastructures, and have validators/nodes runnings on many mainnet and test networks

Some of them includes:

  • Regen
  • Agoric
  • Althea
  • Axelar
  • Mina
  • The Graph Protocol
  • Hopr
  • Juno
  • Stargaze
  • Nym
  • Spacemesh
  • Moonbeam
  • Aleo
  • Ironfish
  • Omniflix

Contributions

I have modified the initial template to include a contribution section, IMHO sometimes just running a node is not enough enough contribution to a project and one can do much more :smiley:

Here are my few contributions to a few networks that I am currently validating

The Graph Protocol:
I deployed the following subgraphs:

  1. DFI Money: Dfi Money Subgraph
  2. IYF Finance: https://thegraph.com/explorer/subgraph/aditya-manit/iyf-finance
  • I also created a rewards calculator during the testnet program later updated it for the mainnet which helped the community a lot in calculating the rewards for an Indexer: https://the-graph-rewards.com/
  • I created a cool Network Simulation which helps peoples appreciate the beauty of decentralization for the Graph Network later updated it for mainnet: https://www.the-graph.network/
    I also later got a grant in wave 1 from The Graph Foundation on the above project :smiley:
  • I made a video on the process of delegation which helped the community a lot initially as this was the only video guide for a week or two after the launch: https://youtu.be/VxET1UOjAMg

Agoric

  1. https://agoric.com/blog/all/testnet-phase-2-recap/
  2. https://agoric.com/blog/all/testnet-recap-phase-3/
  3. Have written a script to stress test their network: Official blog post is yet to come for this

Covalent

Juno

Created a Juno Validator Leaderboard: https://www.juno-leaderboard.dev/

Althea:

  • I am core validator with Althea (only 10-15 members are core validators)
  • I actively help other on discords by answering their doubts/questions

Axelar:

  • I am a Testnet Moderator with Axelar Network and have created a nice looking UI to keep all the testnet form at one place: Knack
  • I have also help build a doc website to keep all the documentation related to testnet at one place: Testnet Node Setup | Axelar Testnet Docs
  • They are in process from transitioning from github to the doc website that I have created.

Mina

  • Got Ranked 1st among 3704 participants in Mina Community Challenges
  • Link to the Leaderboard: Community Leaderboard - Google Sheets
    Note: They happen to list me on 2nd but there is a tie between rank 1 and rank 2 (both have number of points)
  • One of the 430 Prism Contributing Members

There are a few more contributions to mention but I think this data would be suffice to judge :slight_smile:

Security

Security of a validator node can be divided into two parts I believe:

  • Security Against DDoS

For any mainnet validator that I run, I have at least 3 sentries along with the main validating node, the validating node always interact with the three sentries thus making robust against Denial of Service attack.

  • Key Management

For Key Security we use Tendermint KMS, We have setup KMS using YubiHMS2. The service runs in different hosts spearating it from the tendermind nodes. It also has an inbuilt protection against double signing.

On a side note we use ssh to login into our nodes if they are running on cloud.

Reliability

Okay so this is the section where my years of experience in the software development industry comes handy.

We have a lot of metrics being pushed from our nodes on which we have set up dashboards, alerts and different tools.

Dashboards

We have two monitoring dashboards for each of our nodes:

  1. One which has node specific related metrics
  2. OS related metrics like disk usage, CPU utilization and stuff like that.

Alerts

On the top metrics I have integrated alerts with different severity which sends an automated voice call and a text sms with the metrics name on my mobile phone. This really comes handy to address the issue asap

Some of these alerts for a tendermint based system include:

  1. Alerting if there is power change
  2. Alerting if there are a lot of missing blocks
  3. Alerting if the validator gets unbonded and goes into inactive set and many more

I am in process of integrating these metrics with a discord bot to get alert on discord, as I am spending way too much time on discord lately lmao :stuck_out_tongue:

Performance

I usually try to run hardware myself for the love of decentralization.

If not possible due to some reason I always make sure to distribute my sentry nodes over different cloud providers so that it’s never a SPoF (Single Point of Failure). Not only that I usually distribute them geographically too to avoid any physical disaster like an earthquake which could destroy a complete data centre.

Speaking of finances I think I have enough to run any node upto 5-8 years without any profits or anything. Also I am in partnership with a few of the cloud providers who are helping me scale economically. So finance is not really an issue :smiley:

Physical Hardware Specifications

I have a couple of Ryzen™ 9 5900X with 128 GB ram and 16 cores

Cloud Hardware Specification

For any tendermint based chain I usually prefer

  • 8 AMD CPUs,

  • 16GB of Ram,

  • 500GB of NVME SSD

Although it is usually less, but speaking from experience during high load a better and stronger system comes handy if you don’t wanna miss blocks :wink:

Communication

  • I am always available on discord: KingSuper#3702

  • Just tag me on the group or ping me directly, I will be more than happy to address your queries

  • You can also join the server: KingSuper

  • Or email me at aditya.verma.manit@gmail.com if you prefer emails over discord :slight_smile:

Governance

I always like to discuss any proposal on the forum first before I vote. I think this is really necessary because although one may believe his decision is correct, he/she should always be ready to hear otherwise. This omit the possibility of voting without knowing a valid argument of the opposite party which might make sense. I am always open to initiate a discussion if there is not any.

I usually break it down the effect of any proposal on basically 3 things:

  • Long Term effect on the project
  • Effect on community
  • Effect on major participants like delegators/validators

Although it might seem obvious to have a good effect on all three, it’s not really that always. It’s sometimes a trade off between these three components. I always make sure to think about any proposal not only as a validator but as a Team member and as an ordinary community member.

Putting yourself in the shoes of others is the best way to think about any proposal before we vote, IMHO.

3 Likes

Hey KingSuper, I love that you guys are contributing to all these communities with dashboards and other tooling :pray:

1 Like

Thanks @Zach ! Yeah some project are so good that one just can’t resist contributing and Vega is definitely one of them :sunglasses:

Looking forward to contribute as much as I can, towards the project ! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

1 Like

Glad you’re excited! Thanks for the interest :mechanical_arm: