Setting up the remote signer

For security reasons, Vero never interacts directly with validator keys. Instead, key management is handled by a remote signer, such as Web3Signer:

flowchart LR

RS(Remote Signer) <--> V(Vero)

style V fill:#11497E,stroke:#000000

This improves security, but it makes the initial setup a little more complicated.

For this quick-start guide, we'll be making our life easier and use eth-docker to set up both the remote signer and Vero. Perform the following steps on the machine you intend to run Vero on:

1. Clone eth-docker into a new "vero" directory

   cd ~
   
   git clone https://github.com/ethstaker/eth-docker.git vero
   
   cd vero
   

2. Create a copy of the default config file

   cp default.env .env
   

3. Edit the config file

   nano .env
   

   then edit the following lines as needed:

   COMPOSE_FILE=vero-vc-only.yml:web3signer.yml
   FEE_RECIPIENT=0xYourEthereumAddress # Replace with your own fee recipient
   NETWORK=the network to use, hoodi or mainnet
   WEB3SIGNER=true
   CL_NODE=http://beacon-node:5052
   

   Adjust the CL_NODE URL as needed – replace beacon-node:5052 with the IP address or hostname and API port of the CL client you set up earlier.

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Let's check everything is set up correctly

We still haven't imported our validator keys. However, we can check if everything is set up correctly so far.

Run ./ethd up to start Vero and the remote signer. Then, run /ethd logs validator to view Vero's logs.

If you've set everything up correctly, you should see lines like these in the logs:

WARNING: No active or pending validators detected