Choosing a validator infrastructure provider is a higher-stakes decision than most vendor choices: the provider holds operational control over slashing risk, uptime and, indirectly, your stake. These are the seven questions that separate serious operators from resellers — and the answers you should expect.
1. Who exactly holds the keys, and how?
Expect a concrete answer: remote signing (tmkms or equivalent), HSM-backed key storage, and a clear separation between identity, vote and withdrawal keys. “We keep them safe” is not an answer.
2. What is the validator infrastructure provider’s slashing record?
Ask for the number of double-sign and downtime incidents across all chains, ever. A provider that has operated long enough will have a downtime story — what matters is the post-mortem and what changed after.
3. What do you monitor, and what wakes someone up?
Missed blocks, sync lag, peer count, disk saturation, governance events. Ask to see a real dashboard and a real alert escalation path. We publish ours: 10M+ checks per day across 24 networks.
Running this in production?
Get a senior review of your infrastructure — in 7 days
We run validator and cloud infrastructure across 24 chains with 10M+ daily checks at 99.97% uptime. Fixed-price 7-day audit: written report, prioritised findings, 90-min debrief call. $4,500 fixed, no long engagement.
Get the 7-day audit → Book a free 30-min infra review — leave with 2-3 concrete findings4. How do you handle chain upgrades?
Look for governance tracking, staged upgrade windows, cosmovisor or equivalents, and tested rollback plans — not “we watch the Discord”.
5. What happens if the provider disappears?
Runbooks, documented infrastructure as code, and a defined handover process. If the validator infrastructure provider’s knowledge lives in one person’s head, your validator does too.
6. How do you price, and what happens when my needs change?
Per-node pricing, hours banks and no lock-in beat opaque retainers. Ask what a contract exit looks like.
7. Can I talk to a current client?
Verified reviews (Clutch or similar) and referenceable clients are the fastest filter. If a provider cannot produce either, keep looking.
The benchmark
If you want one: our validator operations run across 24 networks at 99.97% uptime, and the 7-day Validator Infrastructure Audit ($4,500 fixed) is the lowest-risk way to evaluate how any validator infrastructure provider works — including us. You can also run the numbers first with the Validator TCO Calculator.