9

I'm researching setting up a highly available baking infrastructure.

Is it possible to use multiple ledgers signing for the same address?

My plan is to use a ledger connected to a laptop running a tezos-signer daemon and have two bakers (one active, one hot-standby) use this signer. I would prefer to duplicate the signer too - if possible. I would like to use a ledger to get it's double bake protection, but I guess that goes out the window if I use multiple ledgers 🤔

2 Answers 2

10

It is possible to have a hot-standby signer albeit I would recommend against it.

In order to have a hot-standby, you initialise a second ledger with the same seed as the first one. Then you need a strategy that describes in what cases the standby signer becomes active.

The downside of a standby signer is that you lose the double-sign protection that the ledger offers, since you cannot port the state to the 2nd ledger when the 1st fails.

In Tezos safety faults are punished much more severely than liveness faults and due to this I would always recommend against having a hot-standby. When your first signer goes down, you should investigate why and manually determine the next steps.

2
  • 2
    Thanks for excellent feedback 👌 Single signer it is, I'll add some double networking and battery backups to it in addition to monitoring 👍 Jan 30, 2019 at 21:04
  • Couldn't the double-baking risk be mitigated if the high watermark was set manually to current block level during any switch over?
    – Svante
    May 1, 2019 at 13:09
2

The main risk with using multiple ledger/bakers is the risk of double-baking/double-endorsing which will make you lose your bond.

So technically the answer to your question is "yes" however to be proper it relies on your setup's ability to make sure that at any one time at most one baking node is able to talk to the network. There are various ways to accomplish this.

0

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.