How to Build your own LTO Node Community.

Community • Published on: Nov 29, 2023 • Last updated: Nov 29, 2023

Running your own LTO Network public node can be interesting, fun, and profitable. By running an LTO Network node, you help decentralize the network and add to the security of LTO Network’s Mainnet. In return, you earn LTO tokens from block rewards that can provide you with profit in the right market conditions.

Technically, you only need 1,000 LTO in your node to be eligible for receiving blocks. No matter how small or big your node is, everyone will enjoy the same APY. A higher amount of LTO in your node (which means a higher percentage of the total stake in the network) will increase the frequency of receiving blocks and thus generate a more regular income of rewards, but it will not increase the chance of a higher APY.

Setting up a node can be done in various ways. For example, by running a computer at home with Windows/Linux, by using a VPS, or even by installing one on a Raspberry Pi. The installation is fairly simple, and if you’re ready to jump in, check out the following article for an extensive how-to.

Node Setup Guide:blog.ltonetwork.com/a-quick-guide-to-setting-up-a-node-on-the-lto-network/

Depending on your choice of infrastructure, you will need to earn more or less rewards per month (and thus more or less LTO staked in your node) to completely cover the cost of running your own node. There are plenty of people in the LTO community who currently run an LTO public node at a loss because they are betting on making a profit off LTO’s expected increase in price over time alone, but why wait for that when you could generate yield now? Even if you do not have enough cash to increase your own amount of staked LTO tokens, there are ways to cover the costs and make additional profit. How, you ask? By attracting leasers, of course!

Attracting leasers is a great way to increase the amount of LTO tokens staked in your community node and earn a small service fee at the same time. The more leasers, the more LTO tokens as service fees you will collect. LTO Network’s Mainnet wallet supports Ledger and makes it super easy for users to lease their tokens to a node of their choosing, so you don’t have to fret about that. Just as important to mention is that a user’s LTO tokens never leave their wallet when they are leased/staked to a community node. A user is always in control of their own tokens. Here is a video on how to stake your LTO tokens.

Where to start?

So, you’ve decided to run your own public node and build a community around it! That is great… but where to start? Let’s dive in.

1) Add your node to the community nodes overview.

Ask the LTO Network team in the Official LTO Network Telegram channel to add your node to the community node list that shows up in LTO Network’s Mainnet wallet. This will make it even easier for leasers to choose your node once they are in their wallet.You can also go to LTO Network’s GitHub directly and create a pull request for it if you know how.

2) Create an online presence.

This can be as simple or complex as you want. The idea is that you have a place to communicate with your sub-community and have a resource available to refer people to when they wish to find information on how to lease to your node. Some ideas:

a. Telegram group.

b. Twitter/Instagram/TikTok account.

c. Website.

d. Discord Channel.

e. Dedicated subreddit.

f. A blog page on, e.g., Medium.

It’s recommended that your online presence has some general information about your LTO Network community node:

- Your node’s name.

- Steps for users on how to lease to your node (or reference to an external source on these steps), as well as information for people about the unbonding period of 50 hours when they stop their lease.

- The node address that people can lease to (should they decide to fill in your node address manually)

- Your payout frequency. It’s recommended to do regular payouts that fit your community’s demand as well as your own schedule. Community nodes currently pay out weekly, bi-weekly, once per month, or after a certain number of blocks. Some nodes have built tools to allow users to withdraw their rewards on demand. Really, it is your choice. Doing the payout transactions costs a few LTO, so doing it too frequently can eat away at your service fee income, but doing it too infrequently might be less appealing to your leasers and push them into trying a different node.

- Mention the node fee you’re charging. The node fee is the percentage that you keep of the rewards you pay out to your leasers. The current community node fees vary from 0% to 5%. There aren't many community nodes with a 0% fee; often, such node runners hope to draw in leasers with no fees, but then you will not generate extra income/profit from it either, and such nodes are often short-lived. Therefore, it is probably wiser to have a node fee of 2,5% or higher, depending on the value you deliver to your node community.

3) Create content and promote your node.

You have to give people a reason to choose your node. Some will simply lease to any node to support decentralization, but others will likely need a bit more convincing to pick your node among many. Being actively involved and engaging with your audience is a great way to make people aware of your node’s existence. And while it is forbidden to promote your node in the official LTO Network Telegram channels, you can certainly spread the news on other platforms and channels. Most likely, you will pick one platform as your main channel for information and communication and then spread your content as wide as possible to catch people’s eyes and redirect them to your node community.Here are a few ideas:

a. Put your node name in your Telegram username/handle.

b. Write blog posts and share them on social media.

c. Create Twitter posts, TikTok, or Instagram shorts (use crypto-focused hashtags)

d. Create in-depth Reddit posts in altcoins subreddits. Reddit can be difficult to create content for, but informative topics can do really well, so think about highlighting use cases, progress, and new developments of LTO and finish up with mentioning your node (if that is not against the subreddit’s rules and regulations)

e. Invite your friends to join your node (at your own risk)

f. Engage in the community channels to help new arrivals navigate the LTO ecosystem . Note: Spamming your node in the channel is not allowed, but helping people and mentioning to them you also run a node in case they want to lease is not a problem as long as it happens organically.

g. Start forum posts on tech websites. Talk about the technical aspects or use cases of LTO Network and put your node in your forum signature text.

h. Create your own Ownables (Decentralized Digital Assets) project and invite your community to participate in your node.

i. Ask your leasers to spread the word.

j. Anything else you can come up with. Radio/TV commercials, flash mobs, node dedicated stickers in nightclubs, it’s up to you!

Once leasers arrive, you can engage with them on the platform of your choice, for example, Telegram. You can use your channel to keep people up to date about the latest things happening with LTO Network so they can easily follow the project. You can throw out price alerts. You can do small quizzes or contests. There are even community nodes that have built their own bots to assist people with withdrawals and information. It can be as lightweight or tech-heavy as you want.

How to do community node payouts?

When you’re attracting leasers to your node, you’ll naturally want to follow up by doing regular payouts so that your node gets a good reputation within the community. In case you have not done so in the beginning, it would be wise to install the payout script in your node. The payout script scrapes through all the minted blocks that were assigned to your own node and calculates precisely which lease should get what percentage of the total rewards.

You can find the payout script and instructions here: https://github.com/CryptoNarf/LTO_LPoSDistributor

Once installed, using the payout script is super easy:

1) In your console, go to ‘cd LTO_LPoSDistributor’ and open the batchinfo.json with “nano batchinfo.json” to change/verify the start and end block of the payment you’re about to do. Exit with ctrl-x and save the file.

2) Run “node appng-juicy.js” This will make the script calculate all the payouts per lease.

3) Run “node checkPaymentsFile.js” to verify how much will be paid out and what the fee of those payments will be. The transaction fee will automatically be paid from the LTO left in the node (the part that is considered your node/service fee percentage, which can be defined in the payout script file)

4) Optional: Check “ltoleaserpayouts1.log” and “ltoleaserpayouts1.html” in the LTO_LPoSDistributor folder to get the payment overview for your group

5) Run “node masstx.js” to do the actual payout to your leasers’ wallets.

6) Optional: If you note down the amount of LTO in the node before doing the payout, you can calculate the amount of LTO that will be left for you as the service fee. You can transfer that amount to a different wallet where you can either lease it to your node or transfer it to an exchange to convert to other coins or fiat to cover the running costs of your node. Do keep an eye on any new blocks that you receive while working on the payout, as you do not want to transfer away too much LTO, resulting in too little LTO present at the next payout.

That’s it! You should now have a good idea of how to build your own active node community and what is needed to get started. Feel free to ask people for help on the LTO Network Telegram channel if you get stuck. There’s a dedicated LTO Techlab channel for node runners, and alternatively, you can reach out on LTO Network’s subreddit.

About LTO Network.

LTO Network is a Layer 1 blockchain with a Public and Private layer to bridge the gap between real-world and digital ownership, decentralized identities, and privacy.