Run a TKMChain validator

Antartical adds a consensus validator registry alongside RandomX mining. A validator is an ML-DSA-87 account that locks a bond, signs the slot attestations assigned to it, and receives one deterministic validator reward per block. The registry is part of the state transition; it is not an EVM contract and cannot be changed by an RPC administrator.

Network and activation rules

(Unix timestamp 1790812800).

genesis so operators can rehearse the complete lifecycle before mainnet.

Legacy ECDSA accounts must migrate before they can register.

canonical state on every node.

• Mainnet: chain ID 8979; Antartical activates at 2026-10-01 00:00 UTC
• Egypt rehearsal: chain ID 8980; the post-fork rules are active from
• Account type: ML-DSA-87 public key and a chain-bound PQ transaction.
• Capacity: at most 4,096 registry records. The active set is derived from

Older nodes must not be used for an Antartical validator. Check the canonical head and fork state first:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8545 \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tkmprotocol_antarticalStatus","params":[]}'

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8545 \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tkmprotocol_antarticalFeatures","params":[]}'

These calls are read-only. A node must report the expected chain ID, canonical head, and active validator feature before an operator signs a registration.

Registration lifecycle

500,000 TKM for the bond and 100 TKM for the registration burn. Keep extra TKM for the transaction fee.

targets the reserved Shielded Pool address, carries exactly 500,000 TKM, and uses the TKMVALREG1 payload. The RLP payload contains the envelope version, the ML-DSA-87 public key, the reward address, and an activation height at least 720 blocks after the current block. The reward address must be the address derived from the same public key.

on the signer. Never paste a PQ secret into a browser, pool, explorer, or relay. The node rejects a mismatched key, chain ID, target, value, or activation height before the transaction enters the pool.

500,000 TKM bond in the state registry. The record is ineligible until its activation height; it cannot be selected early.

stake-weighted, parent-hash-and-height-seeded choice. With the fixed bond, this produces a deterministic rotation that every node can recompute.

1. Fund the signer. The ML-DSA-87 sender needs at least 500,100 TKM:
2. Create the envelope locally. The transaction is type PQTkmTxType,
3. Sign through the local wallet or IPC. Private keys and passphrases stay
4. Wait for activation. Consensus burns the 100 TKM fee and records the
5. Operate the slot. Active records are sorted by address and selected by a

The registration payload and state encoding are defined in core/validator_registry.go. Do not invent a different RLP layout or send a normal Ethereum transaction to the pool address.

Rewards and halving

At the start of the schedule each block carries 200 TKM in protocol reward shares:

| Recipient | Share | | --- | ---: | | RandomX miner | 90 TKM | | Selected validator | 70 TKM | | Rotating King | 35 TKM | | Main King | 5 TKM |

The validator share is paid once to the validator selected for that block. The existing halving interval applies to every share together, using integer wei arithmetic. Reward markers are checked against the parent hash, selected record, recipient, height, and halved amount; a block with a forged or missing validator reward is invalid.

Exit, withdrawal, and slashing

the TKMVALEXIT1 payload. The record stops being selected at the exit height and starts the unbonding clock.

TKMVALWD1 action. Consensus checks the registered public key and returns the 500,000 TKM bond to the validator reward address. A withdrawal before the deadline, from a different key, or twice is rejected.

ML-DSA-87 signatures from the same validator, at the same height, over different block hashes. Valid evidence burns the remaining bond, jails the record for the unbonding period, and is replay-protected by its evidence digest.

• Voluntary exit: sign a zero-value PQTkmTxType to the reserved pool with
• Bond withdrawal: after 21,600 blocks, sign a zero-value
• Equivocation: anyone can submit TKMVSLASH1 evidence containing two

Reorganizations restore the registry and bond state with the canonical block; replaying a registration, exit, withdrawal, reward marker, or slash evidence cannot mint a second effect. Operators should keep the node database and the canonical block source in sync when rehearsing a reorg.

What an operator should monitor

Monitor the node's canonical head, peer health over onion transport, the validator feature flags, and the reward marker in every block assigned to the validator. The explorer's validator view must show the record's registration, activation, exit, jail, and unbonding heights from canonical state. A missing optional registry RPC means “unavailable”; it must never be displayed as an empty or guessed validator set.

The validator registry is one part of the Antartical upgrade. Shield3/Shield4, stamping, TKMNet/Tor-only transport, slot-level witnesses, and the versioned asset and gas metadata follow the same activation boundary. Parallel contract execution, enforced Verkle stateless sync, bundled Revm/evmone backends, and byte-compatible EIP-4337/RIP-7560 remain explicitly gated until their multi-node acceptance tests pass.