Register Calidus Key
This guide will walk you through the process of Registering your Calidus Key on mainnet using Cardano-Signer and Eternl Wallet.
Updated: 1/17/26
Credit to 
Earn Coin Pool for documenting the procedure.
Credit to Martin Lang (ATADA)
and his video here which this guide is based off of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTDigkYZXEQ
More information by Martin Lang on Calidus Pool Key here: https://forum.cardano.org/t/new-calidus-pool-key-for-spos-and-services-interacting-with-pools/143812/
There are basically 3 main things we need to do in order to register our Calidus Key on mainnet:
Install Cardano-Signer on air gapped machine to generate keys.
Generate new Calidus Key files and generate metadata.
Use Eternl to Submit transaction for Calidus Registration to the blockchain using signed metadata
Before we get started
Good to know: The commands were tested with cardano-signer 1.34.0.
Step 1 - Copy Cardano-Signer 1.34.0 File to USB
For this guide we will be downloading cardano-signer-1.34.0_linux-x64.tar.gz.
Using the Cardano-Signer repo we can download the file here:
https://github.com/gitmachtl/cardano-signer/releases/tag/v1.34.0
Step 2 - Copy Cardano-Signer File to Air Gapped Machine
Copy cardano-signer-1.34.0_linux-x64.tar.gz file to air gapped machine.
Extract Cardano-Signer somewhere in the PATH (in /usr/local/bin or where cardano-cli is) on your air gapped machine.
Step 3 - Install Cardano-Signer
ON Air Gapped Machine
To Install run the following commands:
Adjust path to your bin folder or where you put the cardano-signer file
To check if successful, run:
Step 4 - Generate Calidus Key
ON Air Gapped Machine
We will now use cardano-signer to generate Calidus Key files; we will generate them in our $NODE_HOME folder:
To generate the files, run:
Step 5 - Generate the registration metadata signed by your pool cold key
In order to submit a transaction to the blockchain so indexers can pick up our Calidus Key we need to create metadata that we can submit on-chain with Eternl through an internal transaction.
ON Air Gapped Machine
1) First let's unlock our cold keys:
2) Generate the registration metadata and sign it
Adjust path and file named if needed to your cold skey For this example, our cold key is located in our $HOME cold-keys folder.
3) 📝Copy Metadata to a file on your USB to use later on Eternl in hot environment
📝Copy Metadata to a file on your USB
4) Lock your cold keys:
Step 6 - Copy mnemonics to use later
Before we leave Air-Gapped machine let's copy our mnemonic phrase to use later. We will input this into a hot wallet like Eternl for future use when we want to sign something or vote with our Calidus Key
ON Air Gapped Machine
📝Copy to a file to on your USB to use later in hot environment.
Step 7 - Submit Internal Transaction on Eternl
Now we can use any Eternl wallet that we own to submit an internal transaction with the metadata we copied from Step 5.
Step 8 - Verify your Calidus Key is active
You can use adastat to verify that your Calidus Key is registered, go to adastat and search for your pool and go to your pool page. You should now see your Calidus Key 🥳
Congratulations you did it! You Now have a Calidus Key
Create Calidus Key Wallet using mnemonic
Now that we have our Calidus Key registered, we can use our mnemonic to create a new wallet in Eternl just for our Calidus Key. This wallet then can be used for things like voting on Ekklesia ballots.
Remember if you think this Calidus Key wallet has been compromised you can always use the steps above to generate a new Calidus Key and submit the registration on-chain with an internal transaction.
Congratulations you did it!
Contributors
Thanks to the following pools for helping to put together these guides. Please consider delegating to their pools to support them. Are you a pool? Consider buying them a coffee
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