Requirements to Run a Validator
Hardware Requirements
Avalanche is an incredibly lightweight protocol, so nodes can run on commodity hardware with the following minimum specifications.
- CPU: Equivalent of 8 AWS vCPU
- RAM: 16 GiB
- Storage: 1 TiB
- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 or MacOS >= 12
- Network: sustained 5Mbps up/down bandwidth
The node should be configured to accept incoming TCP/IP connections on port 9651.
Hardware requirements may scale based on the amount of $BEAM staked on the node and network activity. Nodes with significant stakes (500k+ $BEAM) may need hardware that exceeds the listed specifications and may also use more bandwidth.
Stake Requirements
In addition to the hardware, running a validator on Beam requires staking a minimum amount of $BEAM tokens. Specifically, you’ll need at least 20000 $BEAM.
Next Steps
If you are sure to meet all the requirements you can now go ahead and add your node as a validator.