Eth2 Entities

Clusters (/clusters)

Clusters are a single set of infrastructure composed of one or more Beacon Nodes, the Validator Clients connected to those Beacon Nodes, and the Validators assigned to those Validator Clients. Clusters are uniquely identified by a GUID that can be found on the Coinbase Cloud platform at any time. In order to create Validators, at least one eth cluster must be deployed from the platform.

Beacon Nodes (/beacons)

Clusters are deployed with one or more Beacon Nodes. This collection represents the entire set of Beacon Nodes running within your account(*). Individual Beacon Nodes can be queried to retrieve details about the node itself as well as the Validator Clients with which it is associated.

Validator Clients (/clients)

Validator Clients are the instances of the eth client software running within your Cluster. Clusters typically contain multiple Validator Clients to reduce risk. Validators are scheduled to Validator Clients in such a way as to evenly distribute them. This collection represents the entire set of Validator Clients running across all of your Clusters. Individual Validator Clients can be queried to retrieve details about it and the Validators scheduled to it.

Validators (/validators)

Validators are the entities responsible for generating blocks and voting for consensus on the eth beacon chain. Validators are assigned to specific Validator Clients, which belong to specific Clusters. Once a Validator is assigned to a Validator Client, its keys are securely generated and copied to the Validator Client. After the keys are copied, the eth DepositData is generated, including the full unsigned transaction (if requested), and made available to be retrieved. Validators can be created and are addressed by their public key in URLs.

Allocation Requests (/allocations)

Creating new Validators is a lengthy process; to support the asynchronous nature of the process, a request to create yields an Allocation ID that represents the request. This Allocation ID is used to retrieve the status of the request and, when complete, the requested results with details of the Validators and the DepositData or unsigned transactions. The /allocation collection represents the entire set of requests created for your account(*).

(*) - ‘Your account’ refers to the organization account associated with the API Token used for the request.