Introducing Cardano Validator Watcher: enhanced monitoring for validators
We are excited to unveil our latest contribution to the blockchain community—the fully open-sourced Cardano Validator Watcher.
After building validator watchers for Ethereum, Cosmos, and Near, we are now introducing an innovative tool that empowers every staker and node operator to monitor their Cardano validator nodes effectively, ensuring optimal performance and streamlined efficiency through periodic metric updates.
Designed to meet Kiln’s enterprise-grade specifications, this tool is a Prometheus exporter that helps anyone running a validator on Cardano to ensure the well-being of their operations.
Empowering the Cardano community
At Kiln, we are committed to driving meaningful change and shaping the future of blockchain technology. Our dedication to open-source tools and community collaboration has led us to develop the Cardano Validator Watcher, a tool that caters to both solo stakers and professional node operators. Whether you are a seasoned expert or just starting out, this tool will help you stay on top of your Cardano validators, ensuring they perform at their best.
Monitor your infrastructure at scale
While there are existing explorers that allow builders to monitor the entire Cardano network, they often lack the ability to specifically track and analyze one's own infrastructure in detail. This is where the Kiln Cardano Validator Watcher comes in. Designed primarily to monitor block production, our tool provides a comprehensive view of your Cardano infrastructure, enabling you to track metrics such as produced, missed, and orphaned blocks. By offering these insights, it empowers you to make informed decisions, optimize performance, and stay ahead of any potential issues.
Key Features
Periodic Monitoring: The Cardano Validator Watcher periodically collects essential metrics, providing valuable insights into the performance and health of your infrastructure. Examples of exported metrics include:
- Block production metrics: Number of blocks produced, missed blocks, and orphaned blocks, helping to track validator performance and reliability. We’ve also included a metric to count the number of consecutive missed blocks, which allows for more effective alerting. This ensures you’re not unnecessarily alerted for a single missed block but are notified only when multiple consecutive blocks are missed, indicating a potentially critical issue.
- Slot leadership checks: Monitoring if the validator is assigned to produce blocks in specific slots.
- Pool metrics: Provide useful data related to your Cardano pools, including key performance indicators such as pool saturation levels, live stake and active stake amounts etc..
- Network Metrics: Provide valuable data about the overall state of the Cardano network, including key indicators such as the current epoch number, the total number of active pools, the current block height etc…
Customizable alerts: With the exported metrics, you can configure your own alerting rules using tools like Prometheus or Grafana. This allows you to stay notified of critical events based on your specific needs.
Dashboard integration: Use the exported metrics to build monitoring dashboards with tools like Grafana, making data analysis and reporting a breeze.
Community-driven: Open-sourced under the MIT license, developers and enthusiasts can freely contribute, modify, and distribute the tool, fostering a community-driven approach to its evolution and improvement.
Open-Source and Community-Driven
In line with our dedication to transparency and community engagement, we have open-sourced the Cardano Validator Watcher. This allows developers and enthusiasts to contribute, customize, and share the tool freely, promoting a collaborative approach to its development and enhancement. As Cardano's influence and adoption continue to expand, tools like the Cardano Validator Watcher will play a role in maintaining the network's stability, security, and overall success.
Explore the Cardano Validator Watcher and start monitoring your validator nodes today: Cardano Validator Watcher on GitHub
Built with ♥️ by Rayane Bellazaar, Senior SRE at Kiln.
About Kiln
Kiln is the leading digital asset rewards management platform, enabling businesses to earn rewards on their digital assets, or to whitelabel earning functionality into their products. Our platform is API-first and enables fully automated validators, rewards, and data and commission management. With over $13 billion crypto assets being programmatically staked, Kiln has a particularly strong track record on Ethereum as we run about 5% of the network; this includes 50,000+ active validators with 0 slashing events. Kiln is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant.
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