nimbus-eth2/docs/the_nimbus_book/src/keep-an-eye.md

Keep an eye on your validator

The best way to keep track of your validator's status is using the beaconcha.in explorer (click on the orange magnifying glass at the very top and paste in your validator's public key):

• Testnet: prater.beaconcha.in
• Mainnet: beaconcha.in

If you deposit after the genesis state was decided, your validator(s) will be put in a queue based on deposit time, and will slowly be inducted into the validator set after genesis. Getting through the queue may take a few hours or a day or so.

You can even create an account (testnet link, mainnet link) to add alerts and keep track of your validator's performance (testnet link, mainnet link).

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Make sure your validator is attached

On startup, you should see a log message that reads Local validator attached. This has a pubKey field which should the public key of your validator.

Check your IP address

Check that Nimbus has recognised your external IP properly. To do this, look at the end of the first log line:

Starting discovery node","topics":"discv5","tid":2665484,"file":"protocol.nim:802","node":"b9*ee2235:<IP address>:9000"

<IP address> should match your external IP (the IP by which you can be reached from the internet).

Note that the port number is displayed directly after the IP -- in the above case 9000. This is the port that should be opened and mapped.

Keep track of your syncing progress

To keep track of your sync progress, pay attention to the Slot start messages in your logs:

INF 2021-05-24 14:53:59.067+02:00 Slot start                                 
topics="beacnde" tid=3485464 file=nimbus_beacon_node.nim:968 lastSlot=1253067 wallSlot=1253068 delay=67ms515us0ns
peers=22
head=eb994064:90753 
headEpoch=2836 
finalized=031b9591:90688 
finalizedEpoch=2834 
sync="PPPPPDDDDP:10:15.4923:7.7398:01d17h43m (90724)"

Where:

• peers tells you how many peers you're currently connected to (in the above case, 35 peers)
• finalized tells you the most recent finalized epoch you've synced to so far (the 8765th epoch)
• head tells you the most recent slot you've synced to so far (the 2nd slot of the 8767th epoch)
• sync tells you how fast you're syncing right now (15.4923 blocks per second), your average sync speed since you stared (7.7398 blocks per second), the time left until you're fully synced (01d17h43m) how many blocks you've synced so far (90724), along with information about 10 sync workers linked to the 10 most performant peers you are currently connected to (represented by a string of letters and a number).

The string of letters -- what we call the sync worker map (in the above case represented by wPwwwwwDwwDPwPPPwwww) represents the status of the sync workers mentioned above, where:

    s - sleeping (idle),
    w - waiting for a peer from PeerPool,
    R - requesting blocks from peer
    D - downloading blocks from peer
    P - processing/verifying blocks
    U - updating peer's status information

The number following it (in the above case represented by 10) represents the number of workers that are currently active (i.e not sleeping or waiting for a peer).

Note: You can also use you the RPC calls outlined in the API page to retrieve similar information.