When you first request a validator inventory, you define the quantity of validator nodes needed from Blockdaemon to support your staking operations. This is both requested and deployed manually. Your validator inventory is either static or dynamic. Choosing the right one will depend on your staking requirements.

• Static Validator Inventory
• This is a fixed and defined configuration of validators.
• This setup is perfect when you know exactly how much stake you’ll be operating from the outset.
• Dynamic Validator Inventory
• This is an on-demand, self-maintaining inventory of validators, optimized to ensure validators are available when required.
• By keeping a dynamic validator inventory, you can easily move validators from a dormant to a reserve state when you need them, simply by calling the Blockdaemon API. This is a preferred method for large institutions with ongoing ETH staking demand.

When called, Blockdaemon’s API constructs an unsigned transaction. For Ethereum, transaction construction uses Blockdaemon’s audited smart contract to bundle up to 100 transactions for validator addresses into one transaction. This reduces gas fees and simplifies the signing process.

Blockdaemon’s single and standardized API empowers clients to streamline delegation to validators in their inventory.

The unsigned transaction is returned to you for review in the API response.

You sign the transaction using your custodian integration, e.g. Fireblocks Signing API, and then broadcast the signed transaction to the network. This broadcasting can be done externally to Blockdaemon, or sent to Blockdaemon to broadcast via the Ubiquity API. The API provides the status of the transaction post broadcast. See our documentation for more info.