Validators

Validators help secure the Hyperlane protocol

Validators are responsible for observing the Mailbox contract and signing its merkle root, facilitating message transmission to remote chains.

Unlike many other protocols, Hyperlane does not have an enshrined validator set. Anyone is free to run a validator and help contribute to securing interchain messages.

Want to run a validator? Follow the instructions at Validators

Validators read the current merkle root by calling Mailbox.latestCheckpoint(). Once a root has achieved sufficient finality, validators are expected to sign it and post their signature to highly available storage so that it can be aggregated by Relayers.

/**
  * @notice Returns the latest checkpoint for validators to sign.
  * @return root Latest checkpointed root
  * @return index Latest checkpointed index
  */
function latestCheckpoint()
  external
  view
  returns (bytes32 root, uint256 index);

Validators that sign anything other than a finalized checkpoint risk compromising the safety of the protocol. If they are participating in Staking and slashing, this may result in their stake being slashed.

Abacus Works is developing the validator as a Rust binary that can be easily run by anyone. Operationally, validators need to run this binary and a node for the chain that they are validating for. We hope that the majority of Hyperlane validators will come from each chain's existing node operator community.