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Mithril Keys Certification

· 3 min read
Mithril Team

Update 2022/12/19: The signer registration with declarative PoolId has been decommissioned.

Update 2022/11/30: The signer registration with declarative PoolId has been deprecated and the certified PoolId is now the stable mode.

The way the Mithril nodes handle the Certification of the SPOs is evolving​

PR: New STM registration procedure #433

Issues: Implement Certification of the Mithril Verification Keys in Signer/Aggregator #455

We have released a new Mithril Signer Verification Keys Certification mechanism:

  • Mithril Signer nodes running the previous version are still able to interact with the network without any further intervention
  • Mithril Signer nodes that are updated from a previous version must migrate some of their stores
  • This mechanism is experimental and can be activated on demand by the SPOs

Upgrade a Mithril Signer running a previous version​

The SPOs need to recompile their Signer node (as in this guide).

The data stores of the node need to be updated by running the following command:

# The path to your data stores directory, which defaults to:
DATA_STORES_DIRECTORY=/opt/mithril/stores

# Run this command to upgrade your stores:
sqlite3 ${DATA_STORES_DIRECTORY}/signer.sqlite3 "UPDATE protocol_initializer SET value = json_object('stm_initializer', json(value), 'kes_signature', null) WHERE json_extract(value, '$.stm_initializer') IS NULL;"

⚠️ If you don't update your data stores with this procedure, your node will not be able to register to the Aggregator temporarily. It should then take up to 3 epochs before it is able to successfully register its individual signatures with the Aggregator.

Hybrid Certification mode in the Mithril network​

From now, SPOs can either run their node by:

  • Declaring their Cardano PoolId:

    • This is the mode that all nodes were running prior to this release
    • This mode is still the stable mode
    • We intend to deprecate this mode in the near future

  • Certifying their Cardano PoolId:

    • The certification is done by providing the Mithril Signer node with KES Secret Key Path and Operational Certificate Path
    • This is an experimental mode
    • We intend to make this mode the only way of providing a PoolId in the near future
    • These PoolIds will be marked with a Verified Signer green badge in the Mithril Explorer (2 epochs after activating the Certification mode)

The setup of a Mithril Signer node with these two modes is available in this guide.

Here is an example of the Verified Signer badge displayed in the Certificate details popin: Verified Signer Badge

How Keys Certification works​

We rely on the Cardano KES Keys and Operational Certificate to be able to:

  • Compute automatically the PoolId from a valid Operational Certificate
  • Sign the Mithril Signer Verification Key with the KES Secret Key
  • Verify that the Mithril Signer Verification Key is associated to the owner of the pool

Keys Certification Schema

Feel free to reach out to us on the Discord channel for questions and/or help.