How to Stop Validating

If you wish to remain a validator or nominator (e.g. you're only stopping for planned downtime or server maintenance), submitting the chill extrinsic in the staking pallet 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 should do the following actions:

• Chill your validator

• Purge validator session keys

• Unbond your tokens

These can all be done with PolkadotJS Apps interface or with extrinsics.

Chill Validator​

To chill your validator or nominator, call the staking.chill() extrinsic. See the How to Chill page for more information. You can also claim your rewards at this time.

Purge validator session keys​

Purging the validator's session keys removes the key reference to your stash. This can be done through the session.purgeKeys() extrinsic with the controller account.

CAUTION

If you skip this step, you will not be able to reap your stash account, and you will also need to rebond, purge the session keys, unbond, and wait the unbonding period again before being able to transfer your tokens.

See Unbonding and Rebonding for more details.

Unbond your tokens​

Unbonding your tokens can be done through the Network > Staking > Account actions page in PolkadotJS Apps by clicking the corresponding stash account dropdown and selecting "Unbond funds". This can also be done through the staking.unbond() extrinsic with the controller account.