Masternodes on Divi: What They Were

1What a masternode was

A masternode was a second Divi node that stayed online all the time, at a fixed public address. To run one, you locked a fixed amount of DIVI, called the collateral, in one output of your wallet. A line in the wallet's masternode.conf file tied that output to the server. In return, the network paid one masternode in every block.

The collateral came in five sizes, called tiers. A bigger tier got more draws in the election that picked each block's winner. Per coin, the bigger tiers got slightly more draws: 20 per 100,000 DIVI for Copper, up to 24 for Diamond.

For each block, every masternode hashed the block and its own collateral once per draw and kept its best result. Masternodes that were too new, or already lined up for a coming block, sat out. The rest were ranked by that result, and the network voted to pay from the top of the list. The amounts above are for mainnet. The code for these tiers is still in Divi Core 3.0.0; it is just never used for payment.

2What masternodes earned

At the time of the switch, each block paid out 950 DIVI. 50 of that went to the lottery. The other 900 were split by fixed percentages.

* Treasury and charity were counted every block but paid out together about once a week, in one treasury block, so you will not see them in an ordinary block.

So a masternode won more per block than a staker did. Since the 3.0 change, the staker gets both shares: 342 + 405 = 747 DIVI at that block value. The block value itself did not change on the day; it still steps down once a year on its normal schedule. For today's figures, see staking returns.

3Why and when they ended

The Divi team explained the reasons in Why Masternodes have to go? on 14 July 2023. In short:

• The list was not on the chain. Nodes passed the list of masternodes to each other. They did not always agree on it, so they sometimes disagreed about which masternode should be paid.
• That caused forks. When nodes disagree about which blocks are valid, the chain splits. Some splits were permanent.
• Vaults do the job better. A staking vault lets you keep your keys while someone else's always-on node stakes your coins. That covered what masternodes offered, without a second network.

The switch was set for 12:00 UTC on 23 August 2023, as Divi 3.0 New Reward Distribution announced. On the chain, the last block that paid a masternode is 2,580,193. From block 2,580,194 on, the staker got 747. You can check both on the explorer:

• Block 2,580,193: the staker gets about 342 more than they staked, and a separate 405 goes to a masternode.
• Block 2,580,194: no masternode output; the staker gets about 747.

4Old collateral that is still locked

Here is the one thing that still matters. When Divi Core starts, it reads masternode.conf in its data folder. For each line, it locks the output named there, so the wallet will not spend it or stake it by accident. Divi Core 3.0.0 still does this. So if you kept your old file, your collateral may be sitting idle while the rest of your wallet stakes.

Check for it

# any locked outputs?
./divi-cli listlockunspent

[] means nothing is locked, and you can stop here. A locked collateral looks like this:

[
  {
    "txid": "68b06649…5905",
    "vout": 1
  }
]

The total from getbalance still counts locked coins, so the balance looks normal. The difference shows in getcoinavailability. On our test wallet, locking one 24,790 tDIVI output changed it like this:

Our test wallet also held a 100 tDIVI vault, which is why Stakable is 100 below the balance even when unlocked.

Unlock it for good

Stop the node. Open masternode.conf in the data folder and delete the line for that output, or put # at its start. Then start the node again. A line looks like this, with your own values:

# alias ip:port key txid index
mn1 203.0.113.5:51472 7Xk… 68b0… 1

On our test node, after the line was removed and the node restarted, listlockunspent answered []. You do not need the masternode server any more either; you can shut it down.

Two other ways, and their catch

• Start with -mnconflock=0. Divi Core then ignores the file for locking. It works, but only while you keep starting the node that way.
• Unlock with lockunspent. This works at once, without a restart. But the next start reads the file and locks the output again. We saw exactly that on testnet.

# true = UNLOCK this output
./divi-cli lockunspent true \
 '[{"txid":"<txid>","vout":1}]'

It answers true. Use it to stake today, and still remove the line from masternode.conf before the next restart.

5The masternode commands today

Divi Core 3.0.0 still has its masternode commands. They answer, but there is nothing for them to report. This is what they said on our testnet node:

None of these mean something is broken. An old guide that tells you to run them, or to start a masternode, is out of date.

6Earn with the coins instead

Once the collateral is unlocked, it is ordinary DIVI and can earn by staking. There is no minimum and no tier. Pick one:

• Stake it yourself in a wallet that stays on: stake in a wallet.
• Put it in a vault and let a staking service's node do the work while you keep the keys: what is a vault, then create a vault.

To see roughly how often it will stake, use estimate your stakes. If it has been years since you looked at this wallet, go through the yearly checkup too.