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.