In the continuing push to secure and tighten up the Node Tracking Systems, the following changes are being deployed and are effective immediately.

Nodetracker v0.4.0 Enforced

Prior versions of Nodetracker are no longer eligible for rewards starting March 1st. Please see Detailed Instructions to update.

Stake Addresses

Due to some node operators circumventing how earnings and payouts are processed, the following changes are being made to both Secure and Super Nodes.

The Stake Address may only be changed once per earning period.

Any change of the Stake Address will not take effect until the start of the next earning period.

The Stake Address in effect during the earning period will be the stake address paid.

See How to Change a Stake Address below.

Node Requirements and Earnings Eligibility

There have been a number of modifications and clarifications to the node requirements. It is suggested node operators review these periodically to stay up to date.

Secure Node Criteria and Reward Eligibility

Super Node Criteria and Reward Eligibility

Duplicate IP Addresses Detection

There is now a more robust check for duplicate IP addresses. An IP address must be unique to a node even across both the Secure Node and Super Node systems. Any active nodes found to have the same IP address will cause an Exception to be created which will affect reward eligibility.

Certificate Check Process

The recent enablement of the ‘certCheck’ process on Secure Nodes has resulted in some nodes experiencing issues potentially related to connections being established from the tracking servers to a node not completing correctly. These situations usually clear themselves in a short period of time. This issue is still under investigation. Part of the research steps being taken are to increase the number of retries before creating an Exception. If this change has little or no effect, the retry count may be re-adjusted.

Details on How to Change a Stake Address

The change process is the same. Either ‘node setup’ may be run on the node and a new stake address entered (preferred) or the stake address may be edited in the config.json file. When the Nodetracker is restarted the new stake address is submitted to the server.

The tracking server will accept a stake address with a balance of 0 since the address will not be changed until the start of the next earning period. This gives the node operator the flexibility to fund the address at a later time (before the start of the next earning period).

If the new stake address does not have the proper balance at the start of the next earning period, the stake address is changed to the new one and an Exception will be created (alert sent to node operator).

If there is an existing pending stake address change, the tracking server will respond with a message on the node console and not accept the change.

If the stake address change was submitted in error, the old stake address may be submitted (replace the address and restart the Nodetracker) and the change will be canceled. The correct new stake address can then be submitted once the cancellation message appears on the node console.