I am wondering if you restart the relay or it is powered down for a period if time, does it go back to phase one and the life cycle starts again? As a new relay?
1 Answer
No. Your relay will lose some of its flags if it's offline for a period of time, but simply restarting doesn't seem to affect its consensus status.
I'm not sure if the consensus deteriorates if your relay is off for too long, but your relay shouldn't "reset" unless it's private key gets reset, or is off for long enough to get removed from the consensus.