Ethereum Validator Watcher

This is a preview of the new version of the Ethereum Validator Watcher.

The code is provided as-is with no warranties.

• Youtube video of Ethereum Validator Watcher talk during EthCC[6]
• Youtube video of Ethereum Validator Watcher talk during EthStaker

Overview Dashboard

The overview dashboard shows an overview of the entire set of watched keys and how they relate to the rest of the network (asset under management, state of keys, performances):

Breakdown Dashboard

The breakdown dashboard offers a way to compare how each set of keys in user-defined category perform:

Description

Ethereum Validator Watcher monitors the Ethereum beacon chain in real-time and notifies you when any of your validators:

• are going to propose a block in the next two epochs
• missed a block proposal at head
• missed a block proposal at finalized
• did not optimally attest
• missed an attestation
• missed two attestations in a row
• proposed a block with the wrong fee recipient
• has exited
• got slashed
• did not had ideal source, target or head reward

It also exports some general metrics such as:

• your USD assets under management
• the total staking market cap
• the epoch and slot
• the number or total slashed validators
• the ETH/USD conversion rate
• the number of your queued validators
• the number of your active validators
• the number of your exited validators
• the number of the network queued validators
• the number of the network active validators
• the entry queue duration estimation

The Prometheus endpoint is automatically exposed on port 8000.

Command line options

Usage: eth-validator-watcher [OPTIONS]

  Run the Ethereum Validator Watcher.

Options:
  --config FILE  File containing the Ethereum Validator Watcher configuration
                 file.  [default: etc/config.local.yaml]
  --help         Show this message and exit.

Configuration

The configuration uses the YAML format:

# Example config file for the Ethereum validator watcher.

beacon_url: http://localhost:5051/
beacon_timeout_sec: 90
network: mainnet
metrics_port: 8000

watched_keys:
  - public_key: '0xa1d1ad0714035353258038e964ae9675dc0252ee22cea896825c01458e1807bfad2f9969338798548d9858a571f7425c'
    labels: ["vc:validator-1", "region:sbg"]
  - public_key: '0x8619c074f403637fdc1f49b77fc295c30214ed3060573a1bfd24caea1f25f7b8e6a9076b7c721076d807003c87956dc1'
    labels: ["vc:validator-1", "region:sbg"]
  - public_key: '0x91c44564d1e61f7f6e35c330bd931590036d461378ab260b83e77f012a47605a393b5a375bf591466b274dad0b0e8a25'
    labels: ["vc:validator-2", "region:rbx"]

In this example, we define 3 validators which are running on two validator clients in separate regions. The labels can be anything you want as long as it follows the category:value format. The breakdown dashboard uses it to offer per-value comparisons within a category. You can for instance compare your missed attestations between region rbx and sbg, or between validator-1 and validator-2. This comes handy when operating at scale, you can quickly isolate where an issue comes from if your groups match your infrastructure.

Any categories of labels is possible, some plausible examples:

• by beacon instance (i.e: beacon:beacon-1)
• by client version (i.e: prysm:v5.0.3)
• by cluster (i.e: cluster:baremetal-1)
• by operator (i.e: operator:kiln)

By default, the watcher exports the following labels:

• scope:watched for the keys present in the configuration file,
• scope:network for the entire network without the keys in the configuration file,
• scope:all-network for the entire network including the watched keys.

Those are used by the overview dashboard and the breakdown dashboard to offer a comparison of your validator keys with the network.

The configuration can be updated in real-time, the watcher will reload it dynamically on the next epoch. This allows to have growing sets of validators, for instance if you deploy new keys.

Beacon Compatibility

Beacon type	Compatibility
Lighthouse	Full.
Prysm	Full.
Teku	Not (yet) tested.
Nimbus	Not (yet) tested.
Lodestar	Not (yet) tested.

The beacon type is relative to the beacon node connected to the watcher, not to the beacon node connected to the validator client containing a validator key you want to watch. The watcher is agnostic of the infrastructure mananing validators keys you want to watch, this means you can run it on an external location if you want blackbox monitoring.

Installation

From source:

git clone git@github.com:kilnfi/eth-validator-watcher.git
cd eth-validator-watcher
pip install .

We recommend using the Docker images.

Docker images

Docker images (built for AMD64 and ARM64) are available here.

Developer guide

We use Poetry to manage dependencies and packaging.

Installation:

git clone git@github.com:kilnfi/validator-watcher.git
cd validator-watcher
poetry install --with dev
poetry shell # To activate Python virtual environment

Running tests:

poetry run pytest

License

MIT License.