Introduction

The Staking UI is designed to address the primary challenges of solo staking: the high cost and technical complexity of deploying a node without blockchain expertise. Launchnodes' user interface simplifies the process, allowing you to set up and manage validator nodes on your own AWS account and infrastructure, ensuring exclusive access and control.

Using Launchnodes eliminates the need for a full execution layer client and beacon node, reducing costs. The interface runs directly on your AWS instance, guiding you through straightforward steps to set up your nodes, while highlighting crucial security measures to protect your secrets. Once your nodes are operational, you can monitor their performance via the Staking UI dashboard or any third-party beacon chain explorer. Node updates can be performed easily through the UI with a single click.

By transforming the deployment process into a visual interface, the Staking UI removes the need to interact with the command line interface (e.g., Terminal on macOS), minimising the risk of human error and enhancing security.

Additionally, the Staking UI features a comprehensive dashboard and node management tools, which will be detailed later in the document. This package serves as a complete solution, enabling solo staking both at scale and on an individual node level.

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NOTE: Encryption

The staking user interface and your node dashboard are not publicly accessible websites. They are hosted on your private AWS infrastructure, which means they are secured and accessible only by you. We have added SSL certificates to enhance security, but you may still see a "Not Secure" warning in your browser when accessing the interface via an IP address.

This warning occurs because browsers often flag SSL certificates used with IP addresses as less secure compared to domain names. While associating a domain name with your infrastructure and applying the SSL certificate to that domain would eliminate this warning, we do not recommend this approach. Attaching a domain would require your IP to be registered in a public domain registry, which is unnecessary and could expose your infrastructure to additional risks.

Your current setup is secure and tailored for private use. If you have further concerns or questions, please let us know.

We also recommend using a VPN when deploying the node or accessing the Staking UI dashboard. Please note that our testing has indicated Cloudflare VPN often blocks UI pages, making it a suboptimal choice for node deployment.

If your stack deployment encounters issues and enters Rollback mode, you can resolve this by changing the AWS server region. This can be done via the header menu of AWS console, located next to your account ID. While we recommend using the London region by default, you are free to select any region that suits your needs.