Protecting your keys

This page contains information about how to protect your validator and wallet keys.

How sensitive are your keys

Validator Keys are very sensitive:

• if you lose them and your node crashes irreparably (i.e. you delete the virtual machine, your VPS provider deletes/loses it), you lose access to that node, you won't be able to bring it back up online and will thus stop earning money with it
• if someone steals them and maliciously uses them in the MultiversX network, they can engage in bad behavior such as double-signing, produce bad blocks, inject fake transactions, mint new coins, etc. - all of those actions are slashable, meaning you can lose your EGLD stake - all 2500!

Wallet Keys are extremely sensitive because:

• if you lose the keys, you can't recover your stake or claim your rewards -> you lose all the money
• if someone steals your keys, they can send an unstake transaction from it and claim the EGLD -> the bad guys steal your money

How to protect your keys

How to protect them:

• make multiple safe backups of the private keys & files
  • paper
  • hardware
  • encrypted physical storage
  • distributed cloud storage, etc
  • some hints

tip

Wallet Keys are not required on host running the Node. Store them on a different location.

How to secure your node

Secure your MultiversX node

• no ports should open in the firewall except for the ones used by the node's normal operation (the port range can be checked here.)
• don't run the node as root
• use encryption, all other measures
• some hints