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Validator FAQ

Answers to frequently asked questions while troubleshooting isses as a Validator.

warning

As of block height 31,056,500 (March 26, 2025, 3:00 AM UTC), Celo is no longer a standalone Layer 1 blockchain—it is now an Ethereum Layer 2! Some documentation may be outdated as updates are in progress. If you encounter issues, please file a bug report.

For the most up-to-date information, refer to our Celo L2 documentation.

How do I reset my local Celo state?​

You may desire to reset your local chain state when updating parameters or wishing to perform a clean reset. Note that this will cause the node to resync from the genesis block which will take a couple hours.

# Remove the celo state directory
sudo rm -rf celo

How do I backup a local Celo private key?​

It's important that local accounts are properly backed up for disaster recovery. The local keystore files are encrypted with the specified account password and stored in the keystore directory. To copy this file to your local machine you may use ssh:

ssh USERNAME@IPADDRESS "sudo cat /root/.celo/keystore/<KEYSTORE_FILE>" > ./nodeIdentity

You can then back this file up to a cloud storage for redundancy.

warning

It's important that you use a strong password to encrypt this file since it will be held in potentially insecure environments.

How do I install and use celocli on my node?​

To install celocli on a Linux machine, run the following:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0 -y
sudo npm install -g @celo/celocli --unsafe-perm

To install celocli on a Mac/Windows machine, run the following:

npm install @celo/celocli

You can then run celocli and point it to your local geth.ipc file:

# Check if node is synced using celocli
sudo celocli node:synced --node geth.ipc