FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Watchtower Address ?

Watchtower address is an Ethereum Wallet (EOA) address and plays a crucial role in the Watchtower client's operations for various reasons:

1. It is employed for signing and submitting transactions specifically related to Watchtower operations, such as submitting Proofs of Diligence.

2. It enhances security measures by avoiding the exposure of the private keys associated with the Operator's Earnings Address (registered on EigenLayer) within the Watchtower client software.

3. The Watchtower address facilitates the management of multiple watchtowers by allowing for distinct tracking, if a node operator runs multiple watchtower nodes.

How is a Watchtower address different from Operator Address ?

Operator Addresses are the addresses registered on EigenLayer as a node operator role. You can read more about Node operators' Keys at https://docs.eigenlayer.xyz/operator-guides/operator-installation

Witness Chain Watchtowers use Operator Addressses to validate if they are valid EigenLayer Operators.

Slashing is not enabled right now. But in further releases, the Operator Address would help to opt-in for slashing purposes

What happens in the case of an Alarm?

Currently, the watchtower submits an Alarm on the AlertManager contract. In the future releases, we expect the following 2 processes to kick in

• Other watchtowers can challenge the Alarm through a dispute resolution process, thereby leading to a Slashing situation

• Applications that require the watchtower services can also subscribe to the contract and take corrective action based on these alerts

Why am I getting a "not found" error when looking out for proposals on L2?

If you face an error which is something like what is shown in this screenshot, most likely, you are running into a "delayed sync" on the L2 node.

Please run ./run-estimate.sh to check if the L2 node you are watching is synced completely.

Why is the operator private key required, TEMPORARILY?

The operator private key is required for the registration of the operator with the Witness Chain AVS. Once the registration process is completed, remove the entry from the config files, until you need it again to interact with the utility for any other registration/deregistration purposes

Explain how the EL operator and watchtower keys are used

During the registration process

1. registerOperatorToAVS - EL Operator's Key is used to sign the txn

2. registerWatchtowerAsOperator - EL Operator's Key is still used to sign the txn, but the function also takes in a signedMesage field (signature obtained by the watchtower private key signing the operator address)

During the proof submission process

1. submitPoD/PoIProof - Only the watchtower keys are used for signing.

Is there a minimum stake required to be restaked on for the operator to run the watchtower?

No. There is no minimum stake required as of now.

However, there's a process in place for whitelisting, which involves thorough checks to prevent spam actors from being approved.

Watching a chain also demands substantial infrastructure, including the setup of L2 Archive nodes, which typically only committed operators undertake. Furthermore, providing proof of due diligence requires operators to incur gas fees.

What to do I get this error: Registering watchtower as operator failed: insufficient funds for gas * price + value on the L2 chain?

Please use the faucet to fund you operator and watchtower addresses