Introduction to Fusion Mainnet: Nodes, Staking & Expectations.

Successfully setting up and operating a node in the Fusion network will let you be a part of keeping the network both safe and decentralized while enjoying your fair share of the generous block rewards which currently adds up to about 40% yearly ROI with about 13.5M total FSN staked. You shouldnt expect a static ROI because if the number of staked FSN were to increase then the rewards would go down and vice versa. There is a multitude of guides describing how to set up a node and most of them will be found within Fusion’s Zendesk here.

It is not all glitz and glamour being a node operator. The generous block rewards come with certain demands on you as an operator. You are required setup your node on sufficient hardware, current minimum recommended specifications are 2CPU, 4GB ram and 100GB SSD/HDD. You are also expected to keep your node online and responsive at all times. There is a strict mechanism built into the ticket system which secures that only response nodes remains in the network by retreating the winning tickets of any unresponsive node. Tickets are bought with time-locked FSN at a length of 30 days which means that any retreated ticket results in the loss of staking ability of these FSN for the remainder of the 30 days.

If you are thinking about running multiple nodes to the same address to make sure at least one node is online at all times then think again. There is one more mechanism built in to make sure multiple nodes cannot validate the same block as this would produce a mini fork or re-org. This mechanism will retreat ALL tickets of any address found to be validating the same block twice. Do NOT run multiple nodes on the same wallet.

The only way to make sure your node does not go unresponsive is to pick a reputable vps provider and have backup node(s) available to turn on in case of any downtime on your main node. There are tools being developed that will enable you to setup automatic failover nodes but nothing readily available at this point. Currently it will be up to you, if you trust your VPS provider enough where you think manually checking responsiveness and and starting backup node if needed is safe enough.