Becoming a relayer
Anyone can become a BPX Bridge relayer and validate transactions passing through the bridge. For helping maintain the bridge secure, relayers are paid in each blockchain native currencies.
To become a relayer, the following conditions must be met:
- You must have a fast and stable Internet connection, uninterrupted power supply and a server running 24/7 with Windows, Linux or Mac OS. VPS in the dedicated hosting company is also allowed.
- You must have the RPC access to full nodes of BPX Chain and other blockchains for which you want to relay transactions. Using the public RPC endpoints is strongly discouraged, local nodes are preferred.
- You must activate your relayer wallet in bridge smart contracts and thus deposit a relayer stake for each relay direction. For example, if you only want to relay transactions coming from the BPX network to Arbitrum, you must only deposit on the Arbitrum network. If you want to relay transactions going both ways, you need to deposit on both networks. If you want to validate transactions between the BPX, Arbitrum and Polygon in all allowed directions, you must deposit on the Arbitrum network, deposit on the Polygon network, and deposit on the BPX network twice. Of course, after unregistering the relayer, you could immediately withdraw all deposited funds, and for the whole time deposits are locked by a smart contracts. BPX developers are not their custodians.
- You must run the open source relayer software for each relay direction and ensure it is always running without any issues.
Current relayer stake amounts in all supported chains:
| Chain | Relayer stake |
| BPX Chain | 3,000,000 BPX |
| Arbitrum | 0.25 ETH |
| Polygon | 1500 MATIC |
| Avalanche C-Chain | 25 AVAX |
Relayer stake is a crucial mechanism for ensuring bridge security. Without this deposit, one person could register millions of relayer wallets and thus gain a huge probability of being able to sign transactions themselves, without other honest relayers. Additionally, the deposit enforces relayer to unregister from the smart contract to end their relaying activity which protects the bridge against stucked transactions because of lack of signature from "abandoned" relayer.