Step 2: Set up baker accounts

In this section you use the Octez client to set up two accounts for your baker:

• The baker key itself (also called the manager key) stakes tez and registers as a delegate
• The consensus key is the key that the baker uses to sign attestations, which are generally referred to as consensus operations

Why set up a consensus key?

Using a separate consensus key is not required but it is good security practice. Signing consensus operations incurs no fees, so you can set up a consensus key with no tez. You can generate and use this key on a remote machine that runs the baker and keep the baker key with your staked tez in a more secure location to reduce risk to your funds. This prevents you from having to move private keys between machines, which is inherently dangerous.

If the consensus key is compromised or lost, you can create a new consensus key and switch the baker to it without changing how your tez is staked and delegated and without moving your delegators and stakers to a new account. In this way you can avoid transferring or backing up the consensus key or you can store it in a Key Management System (KMS) or Hardware Security Module (HSM) where no one has access to its private key.

However, the consensus key can drain the liquid (unstaked) tez from the baker key, so you must keep the consensus key secure like all other keys.

For more information about consensus keys, see Consensus key in the Octez documentation.

Creating the accounts

In this section, you use the Octez client to create these accounts and set them up for baking.

1. Create or import an account in the Octez client to be the baker account (sometimes called the "manager" account). The simplest way to get an account is to use the Octez client to randomly generate an account. This command creates an account and associates it with the my_baker alias:

   octez-client gen keys my_baker

   You can get the address of the generated account with this command:

   octez-client show address my_baker

   You can check the balance of the account with this command:

   octez-client get balance for my_baker

2. Stake at least 6,000 tez with the account, saving a small liquid amount for transaction fees. Staked tez is temporarily frozen and cannot be spent, so you need some unstaked tez to pay transaction fees.

   You can check how much you have staked by running this command:

   octez-client get staked balance for my_baker

   If you need to stake more, pass the amount to the stake command, as in this example:

   octez-client stake 6000 for my_baker

   If you are using a testnet and need tez to stake, you can get tez from the testnet faucet. For example, if you are using Ghostnet, use the Ghostnet faucet linked from https://teztnets.com/ghostnet-about to send tez to the baker account.

   Running a baker requires staking at least 6,000 tez, but the more tez it stakes, the more rights it gets and the less time it has to wait to produce blocks and make attestations. However, be aware that getting large amounts of tez from the faucet may take a long time (sometimes more than one hour) to prevent abuse of the faucet. Consequently, some large requests may time out or fail and need to be resubmitted.

   When the account receives its tez, it owns enough stake to bake but has still no consensus or DAL rights because it has not declared its intention to become a baker.

3. (Optional) Set up a separate account to be the consensus key. This command creates an account and associates it with the consensus_key alias:

   octez-client gen keys consensus_key

   This account does not need any tez.

4. Register the baker account as a delegate and set its consensus key (if you set one) by running the following command:

   octez-client register key my_baker as delegate with consensus key consensus_key

   If you are not using a consensus key, omit the argument with consensus key consensus_key.

Now the baker account has staked enough tez to earn the right to make attestations, including attestations that data is available on the DAL. If you set up a consensus key, that key is authorized to sign consensus operations on behalf of the baker account. However, the accounts do not receive these rights until a certain amount of time has passed.

While you wait for attestation rights, continue to Step 3: Run an Octez DAL node.