Updated on February 8, 2022

Voluntarily exit a validator

A voluntary exit is when a validator chooses to stop performing its duties, and exits the beacon chain permanently.

To voluntarily exit, the validator must continue performing its validator duties until successfully exited to avoid penalties.

Important

To voluntarily exit, you must have a running beacon node with the REST API enabled.

Danger

A validator cannot rejoin the network once it voluntarily exits.

Danger

Even if a validator has successfully exited, it cannot withdraw its funds until withdrawals are enabled in a future upgrade of the consensus layer.

Initiate a voluntary exit

Use the voluntary-exit subcommand to initiate a voluntary exit for specified validators.

Example

teku voluntary-exit --beacon-node-api-endpoint=http://127.0.0.1:5051 \
--validator-keys=validator/keys/validator_1e9f2a.json:validator/passwords/validator_1e9f2a.txt

In the command:

Specify the location of the beacon node using --beacon-node-api-endpoint.
Specify the validators to exit using the --validator-keys option.
Specify the earliest epoch at which to exit using the --epoch option. If not specified, this defaults to the current epoch. You cannot specify a future epoch.

If using an external signer such as Web3Signer, then specify the external signer URL and public key of the exiting validator:

Example

teku voluntary-exit --beacon-node-api-endpoint=http://127.0.0.1:5051 \
--validators-external-signer-public-keys=1e9f2afcc0737f4502e8d4238e4fe82d45077b2a549902b61d65367acecbccba \
--validators-external-signer-url=http://localhost:9000

Use the /eth/v1/beacon/pool/voluntary_exits API to check the pending exit queue.