Validators and roles
Validators run GenLayer nodes, stake GEN, execute Intelligent Contracts, and submit consensus actions to GenLayer Chain. A validator can receive different roles for different transactions.
Roles in a transaction
| Role | Main responsibility | Selection |
|---|---|---|
| Activator | Advances the next queued transaction and fixes the seed used for committee selection. | Uniformly from the active validator set. |
| Leader | Executes the Intelligent Contract, proposes a receipt, and participates in voting. | Randomly from the selected committee, using stake-weighted selection. |
| Committee member | Evaluates the leader's receipt, commits an encrypted vote, and reveals it. | Randomly from the active set, weighted by validator selection weight. |
The leader is part of the committee. It runs both the leader path and the validator path, then commits and reveals its own vote. This keeps the voting set odd in a normal round.
The activator is a coordination role, not a proposer. When the activator is also selected for the committee, the protocol excludes it from leader selection.
What a validator node does
A node follows GenLayer Chain events and reads the consensus contracts to learn its assignments. It then:
- reconstructs the relevant Intelligent Contract state;
- executes the leader or validator path in GenVM;
- signs and sends the required proposal, commit, or reveal transaction; and
- monitors deadlines, appeals, epoch changes, and staking duties.
Consensus actions are recorded on GenLayer Chain. Validators do not exchange offchain votes through a separate peer-to-peer consensus protocol.
Selection weight
Committee selection is stake-weighted, but it is not directly proportional to raw stake. The protocol calculates a governance-configurable weight from self-stake and delegated stake:
weight = (alpha × self-stake + (1 - alpha) × delegated stake) ^ betaCurrent defaults give self-stake more influence and apply sublinear damping so that selection probability grows more slowly than stake. See staking for the current defaults and activation rules.
Liveness and accountability
Each phase has an onchain timeout. If an assigned participant does not act, a permissionless idleness call can replace it, rotate the leader, or move the transaction to a timeout or undetermined decision. Repeated idleness, failure to reveal, or proven deterministic violations can cause exclusion and slashing.
To operate a node, use the validator setup guide.