AVS Operator Guide

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Overview

Hyperlane validators are light offchain agents responsible for security - they observe messages on an origin chain’s Mailbox and if needed sign a merkle root that attests the current state of the mailbox.

This signature is stored and made publicly available (e.g. in an S3 bucket), which is then used by the offchain Relayer and Interchain Security Modules onchain. Validators are not networked together and do not need to reach consensus.

As you follow this guide, you’ll run a Hyperlane validator on any of the chains the protocol is live on, including Arbitrum, Optimism, BSC, Base, Blast, Linea, Mode, and Polygon. After that you’ll link your validator with your EigenLayer Operator by interacting with the AVS contract on Ethereum Mainnet or Holesky. This process, like the entire Hyperlane framework, is open source and permissionless - no whitelisting or staking minimums needed.

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1. Install CLI

Install the latest version of the @hyperlane-xyz/cli package with npm install -g @hyperlane-xyz/cli. Detailed CLI install instructions are available here.

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2. Run the validator

Operators that want to quickly deploy a production ready environment using Docker Compose and AWS may wish to use the Docker Compose quickstart guide.

Follow the validator guide here with the AWS setup to run the validator on any chain within the Hyperlane network. You can also easily generalize for other storage providers like GCP and Azure, or other key management solutions.

Ensure that your KMS key has funds on that chain to announce itself.

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Monitoring

You can monitor EigenLayer specific endpoints via the --metrics port you specified in the validator configuration. Read more about the example endpoints and what should be expected here.

The supported endpoints are:

You’ll need the validator address (address of the signing key) for the next step.

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3. Set up keys

There is a distinction between the operator key and the AVS signing key. The operator key is meant for just interacting with the AVS contracts whereas the AVS signing key is used for active operations, which in our case will be signing checkpoints with a Hyperlane validator.

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4. Register your operator

First, make sure you’re registered with your operator key as an EigenLayer operator on Mainnet or Holesky. You’ll only need the ECDSA key.

Next, to register your operator to Hyperlane AVS, you can use the Hyperlane CLI. Register your operator key (generated via the EigenLayer CLI) by creating an ECDSA signature and submitting it along with the AVS signing key, which is your Hyperlane validator address from above (not a private key).

 hyperlane avs register --operatorKeyPath <PATH_TO_OPERATOR_KEY> \
    --chain <AVS_NETWORK> \
    --avsSigningKeyAddress <AVS_SIGNING_ADDRESS>

The AVS_NETWORK is the network you’re registering on, which can be Ethereum or Holesky.

Your AVS signing key can be reused across multiple validators and doesn’t require additional registration for each. If you use different AVS signing keys for each validator, you’ll need to register each as an operator.

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Confirming registration

To confirm you are registered on mainnet, run hyperlane avs check --chain ethereum --operatorAddress <EIGENLAYER_OPERATOR_ADDRESS> using the Hyperlane CLI and see if your validator address is there. This query may take a few minutes to complete.

Additionally, you can search your address under the operatorRegistry function on Etherscan or check on EigenLayer’s UI for Ethereum or Holesky.

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Learn more

• You can read more about the AVS protocol design here.