Adding Horcrux
What is Horcrux?
Horcrux is a secure multi-party computation (MPC) signing service designed for CometBFT nodes (formerly known as Tendermint). It enhances the security and availability of validator infrastructures by introducing fault-tolerant block signing mechanisms and advanced private key protection.
Key Features
- High Availability (HA): Horcrux replaces traditional remote signers with a cluster of signer nodes, enabling fault-tolerant block signing and minimizing downtime risks.
- Enhanced Security: It protects your validator’s private key by splitting it across multiple signer nodes using threshold Ed25519 signatures, ensuring no single point of failure.
- Optimized Performance: Provides robust security and availability without compromising block signing performance.
Why is Horcrux Important?
Validator operators face a critical challenge in balancing operational reliability and security to avoid penalties such as slashing due to downtime or double signing.
Horcrux addresses these challenges by:
- Preventing Downtime: Traditional low-availability setups require manual failovers, which can lead to downtime if intervention is delayed. Horcrux’s fault-tolerant design mitigates this risk.
- Avoiding Double Signing: High-availability systems that rely on hot spares risk double signing in the event of failover detection bugs. Horcrux’s consensus and failover detection mechanisms reduce this risk.
- Ensuring Consensus: Through multi-party computation and Raft-based leader election, Horcrux ensures reliable and secure operations, balancing high availability with robust security.
Learn More and Install Horcrux
For detailed installation instructions and migration guidance, refer to the official Horcrux installation guide: