Create a vote account

1. Open a bash CLI on your local computer (this example assumes using a Linux machine).

2. Install Solana CLI:

sh -c "$(curl -sSfL https://release.solana.com/stable/install)"

See the Solana documentation for details.

1. Create a directory to store your validator keys locally and change to it. For example:

mkdir /root/.secrets && cd /root/.secrets

1. Generate three key pairs:

solana-keygen new --outfile ./vote-account-keypair.json
solana-keygen new --outfile ./validator-keypair.json
solana-keygen new --outfile ./authorized-withdrawer-keypair.json

1. Optional: enter a BIP39 passphrase for each key pair for improved recovery phrase security.

2. Transfer at least 0.03 SOL to your newly created validator account to enable the on-chain transaction in the next step.

It is advisable to transfer enough SOL to make sure your validator doesn't run dry when voting.

1. Create a vote account:

solana create-vote-account ./vote-account-keypair.json ./validator-keypair.json ./authorized-withdrawer-keypair.json --keypair ./validator-keypair.json

1. After your vote account has been created, you will see this:

1. Connect to your Linux server via SSH.

2. Create a directory to which you want to copy your validator keys. For example:

mkdir /root/.secrets

1. Copy the vote-account-keypair.json and validator-keypair.json files to the newly created directory on your server.

2. Go back to SVT and select Configuration in the navigation menu.

3. Click New Validator.

1. Copy the public key of your vote account to the Vote key field.