Authorities

Storage Plain v101 → current

The current set of block production authorities.

Queried by: validatorsdevelopersanalytics

The Big Picture

Aura (Authority Round) is the block production consensus mechanism. Authorities take turns producing blocks in a round-robin fashion. This storage contains the current set of authorized block producers. Unlike validation on subnets, these are the core chain validators responsible for creating blocks.

Why This Matters

Who can produce blocks on this chain? Authorities answers this. These are the validators keeping the network running - if you're running a validator node, you need to be in this list.

Example Scenario

Query Authorities() returns a list of AccountId32 public keys. Each key represents a validator authorized to produce blocks. They rotate through slots based on the Aura algorithm.

Common Questions

How do authorities get selected?: Authority selection is managed by governance/admin operations. Changes are rare and require privileged access (sudo or council).
What happens if an authority goes offline?: Their slot is skipped and the next authority in rotation produces the block. Extended outages may trigger removal via governance.
Is this the same as subnet validators?: No. Aura authorities produce blocks for the entire chain. Subnet validators evaluate miners within specific subnets. Different roles.
How often does this change?: Rarely. Authority changes require explicit transactions (usually admin/sudo). Normal operation maintains a stable authority set.

Use Cases

Verify which validators can produce blocks
Monitor authority set rotation
Build block producer tracking dashboards
Research consensus participation
Debug block production issues

From Chain Metadata

The current authority set.

Purpose & Usage

Purpose

Track which accounts are authorized to produce blocks in the Aura consensus mechanism.

Common Query Patterns

Query full authority list
Check if an account is an authority
Monitor authority set changes

Stored Value

BoundedVec

List of block production authority public keys

Code Examples

import { ApiPromise, WsProvider } from "@polkadot/api";
import { stringCamelCase } from "@polkadot/util";

const provider = new WsProvider("wss://entrypoint-finney.opentensor.ai:443");
const api = await ApiPromise.create({ provider });

// Query Authorities storage (no keys - plain value)
const result = await api.query
  [stringCamelCase("Aura")]
  [stringCamelCase("Authorities")]();
console.log("Authorities:", result.toHuman());

Runtime Info

Pallet: Aura
Storage Kind: Plain
First Version: v101
Current Version: v393

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