Voluntary Exiting a Validator

Remove a validator from staking duties.

⏭️ Voluntary Exit Timeline Visualized

Voluntary exit procedures involve multiple steps and potential delays. For a complete overview of these steps and delays, refer to Ladislaus's informative graphic.

👏 Purpose

Use the Voluntary Exit command to signal your intentions to permanently stop your duties as a validator.

• Timeline: Voluntary exiting is possible after your validator is actively validating. If there is no exit queue, the exit process requires at least 4 epochs, or 26 minutes. After your validator is "exited", and proceeds through the "withdrawal delay" phase and "withdrawal processing" phase, your ETH is automatically swept back to your withdrawal address.

• Consequences: Once a validator is in exited state, it's non-reversible. You would need to re-key, or generate new validator keys to start staking again.

• ETH Deposit: In order to re-claim your 32ETH validator deposit and perform a full withdrawal, you must have previously set a Withdrawal Address. If not yet set, see here: 0x01 withdrawal address.
• Responsibilities: After your validator leaves the exit queue and is truly exited, it is safe to turn off your execution client, consensus client and validator.

Reference: https://liquidcollective.io/eth-activations-and-exits/

💻 How-to initiate a voluntary exit

Lighthouse

sudo lighthouse account validator exit \
--keystore /var/lib/lighthouse/validators/<0x validator>/<keystore.json file> \
--beacon-node http://localhost:5052 \
--network mainnet

Example:

sudo lighthouse account validator exit \
--keystore /var/lib/lighthouse/validators/0x838f024753064e90fd8fa183400af82dd2103df885/keystore-m_12311_12-112312.json \
--beacon-node http://localhost:5052 \
--network mainnet

Teku

sudo /usr/local/bin/teku/bin/teku voluntary-exit \
--beacon-node-api-endpoint=http://127.0.0.1:5052 \
--validator-keys=<path to keystore.json>:<path to password.txt file>

Example:

sudo /usr/local/bin/teku/bin/teku voluntary-exit \
--beacon-node-api-endpoint=http://127.0.0.1:5052 \
--validator-keys=/var/lib/teku/validator_keys/keys/validator_1abc3.json:/etc/teku/validators-password.txt

Nimbus

sudo /usr/local/bin/nimbus_beacon_node deposits exit \
--validator=<VALIDATOR_PUBLIC_KEY> \
--data-dir=/var/lib/nimbus

Example:

sudo /usr/local/bin/nimbus_beacon_node deposits exit \
--validator=0x838f0247538237064e90fd8fa183400af82dd2103df885 \
--data-dir=/var/lib/nimbus

Prysm

sudo /usr/local/bin/validator accounts voluntary-exit \
--wallet-dir=/var/lib/prysm/validators

Lodestar

Stop Lodestar validator

sudo systemctl stop validator

Run the voluntary exit command

# change directories to binary folder
cd /usr/local/bin/lodestar

# the voluntary exit command
sudo ./lodestar validator voluntary-exit

Restart validator

sudo systemctl restart validator

Troubleshooting: To perform a voluntary exit, make sure your consensus client (aka beacon node) is running with REST-API enabled.

Official reference documentation from each team can be found below:

• Exiting a Teku validator
• Exiting a Prysm validator
• Exiting a Nimbus validator
• Exiting a Lodestar validator
• Exiting a Lighthouse validator