⚠️ If you wish to remain a validator or nominator (e.g. you’re only stopping for planned downtime or maintenance), CHILLING your validator should suffice. It is only if you wish to unbond funds or reap an account that you should continue with the following.
To ensure a smooth stop to validation, make sure you do the following actions:
- Chill your validator
- Purge validator session keys
- Unbond your tokens
These can all be done with the Geode Portal or, if you prefer, with extrinsics (but why?).
Chill The Validator
To chill your validator or nominator, go to the Network > Staking > Accounts page on the Geode Portal and click the ⏹ Stop button for that validator. You can also claim any available rewards at this time.
Purge Validator Session Keys
Purging the validator’s session keys by deleting the keystore folder on your machine for this validator node.
Unbond your tokens
Unbonding your tokens can be done through the Geode Portal by clicking the corresponding stash account dropdown and selecting “Unbond funds” on the Network > Staking > Accounts page. This can also be done through the staking.unbond() extrinsic with the controller account.