Curriculum breakdown & timeline

Curriculum breakdown by week

Week 1

1) Understanding Ethereum validators

• What are nodes and validators on Ethereum, and why solo-stake?

• Roles & responsibilities of a node operator

• Rewards and penalties

• Importance of client diversity

• Distributed validator technologies (DVTs)

• Bonded validators

2) Hardware concepts

• Setup overview

• Hardware & system requirements performance

• Procuring your hardware

*1 week lead time to purchase and receive hardware

Week 3

3) Hardware purchase and setup

• Inspecting and assembling your hardware - preventing supply chain attacks

4) Installing the Linux OS

• Install & Prepare OS

• Test on Google Cloud VM using free credits

5) Networking & network security

• Networking basics

• Advanced networking - Port forwarding, Upnp, VPN

• How to configure your home network

6) Security

• How to use SSH tunnelling for secure remote access

• Firewalls, automatic patching, brute force protection, automatic security updates

• Verifying checksums

Week 4

7) Execution client setup (Holesky)

• Generating JWT token

• Installing dependencies

• Downloading and installing the execution client

• Prepare execution client configuration file

• Running the execution client

8) Consensus client setup (Holesky)

• Installing dependencies

• Downloading and installing the consensus client

• Prepare consensus client configuration file

• Running the consensus client

Week 5

9) MEV-Boost setup (Holesky)

• Installing dependencies

• Prepare the MEV-boost configuration file

• Running MEV-boost

10) Monitoring suite

• Setting up Prometheus and Grafana

• Set up beaconcha.in notifications

11) Maintenance

• Updating your validator node

• Pruning execution clients

• Pruning consensus clients

Week 6

12) Validator key generation (Holesky)

• Setting up an air-gapped machine

• SOPs during key generation and storage

• Key generation process

13) Validator client setup (Holesky)

• Prepare validator client configuration file

• Running the validator client

14) Depositing ETH

• Get Holesky ETH from faucets

• Complete the deposit process

15) Tips and other best practices

• Slashing prevention

• Maximising uptime

• Optimising security

• Managing your withdrawal wallet

Week 7

16) DVT & bonded validator setup (Holesky)

Week 8 to 9

17) Mainnet deployment