Validator Node Installation (with Binaries)

June 10, 2023 kalychain 0

❌ WARNING: This guide assumes you using the Security Best Practices setup guide on your server. ❌

 

Being a validator node in KalyChain’s IBFT 2.0 PoA (Proof of Authority) consensus system can provide several benefits. Some of them are detailed below:

  1. Consensus Participation: As a validator node, you have the opportunity to actively participate in the consensus decision-making process. Validator nodes are responsible for validating and adding transactions to blocks, allowing them to directly contribute to the security and integrity of the network.
  2. High Throughput Capability: IBFT 2.0 PoA is an efficient consensus mechanism that enables high throughput compared to other consensus protocols such as Proof-of-Work (PoW). Validator nodes in an IBFT 2.0 PoA system can process transactions quickly and achieve shorter block confirmation times.
  3. Scalability: KalyChain, with the IBFT 2.0 PoA consensus, offers a scalable solution for enterprise networks and consortia. It can support a significant number of validator nodes, allowing the network to expand and handle higher volume of transactions as it grows.
  4. Energy efficient: Unlike Proof of Work, which requires a large amount of computational power and energy to solve complex cryptographic problems, IBFT 2.0 PoA is an energy efficient consensus protocol. By using an authoritative approach, there is no need to compete to solve math problems, resulting in lower energy consumption.
  5. Increased security: The IBFT 2.0 PoA consensus provides increased security compared to completely public decentralized systems. Since the validator nodes are selected and trusted, the risk of malicious attacks is significantly reduced. In addition, the PoA consensus mechanism allows for fast block completion, making it easy to detect suspicious activity early.
  6. Governance: As a validator node, you have the ability to participate in the governance of the network. This involves making decisions related to system evolution, protocol updates, and consensus rules. Participating in governance gives you the opportunity to influence the development and direction of the network.

Importantly, these benefits apply specifically to KalyChain’s IBFT 2.0 PoA consensus system. Other consensus systems may offer different benefits or have different characteristics in terms of performance, security, and scalability.

 

You and ONLY YOU are responisble for securing your server. The Validator private key is not encrypted! Failing to properly secure your server can result in the loss of funds. To furhter prevent the loss of funds we recomend adding the Validator private key to metmask or some other compatable web3 wallet and moving funds to a seperate address on a regular basis.

Getting Started

Login to your server via ssh as a non-root user

ssh [email protected]

Install OpenJDK-17

sudo apt install openjdk-17-jre-headless -y

Download the binary and clean up the zip file

wget https://github.com/KalyCoinProject/kalychain/releases/download/22.10.3/kaly-22.10.3.zip
sudo apt install unzip -y && unzip kaly-22.10.3.zip
sudo mv kaly-22.10.3 kaly && rm kaly-22.10.3.zip

Make a data directory

mkdir node && mkdir node/data

In this example the node/data directories are where the blockchain and genesis files will be stored. You can choose to store these files in other locations based on your setup. If you change the location of these files then you will need to update the paths when starting the node.

Copy the genesis file to the new node directory. You can find the genesis.json file in the config directory of this repo.

cp Node-Install/validator/config/genesis.json  node/genesis.json

Validator configuration

Create a new private key, public key and node address with the following commands.

cd /kaly/bin/besu
./besu --data-path=. public-key export --to=key.pub
./besu --data-path=. public-key export-address --to=nodeAddress

{% hint style=”info” %} The oututs of each command will print the key and node address on screen, make sure your copy them to a safe place, you will need them later to be added as a Validator and to add to your wallet (metamask or other) to collect block rewards. {% endhint %}

The keys ‘key’, ‘key.pub’ and ‘nodeAddress’ will have been generated and there gonna be stored in the node/data directory.

mv key node/data
mv key.pub node/data
mv nodeAddress node/data

Start the KalyChain node.

In this section, a daemon will be created to start the KalyChain node in case of server crashes, unexpected restarts, etc.

🔥 Pro Tip We have included a bash script named start_node.sh to run these steps for you, please review it and make any changes to paths as needed for your setup. Make the file exicutable by running chmod +x start_node.sh

The first thing is to create the file for the besu service. To do this, the following steps will be followed.

cd /lib/systemd/system
sudo nano kalynode.service

The following variables will be put in this file: StartLimitBurst and RestartSec will cause it to make 5 restart attempts every 10s and if it fails at all it will stop trying.

[Unit]
Description=Kaly Node Service
After=network.target
StartLimitBurst=5
StartLimitIntervalSec=200

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/home/$USER/node/
Type=simple
User=$USER
Group=$USER
ExecStart=/home/$USER/node/../kaly/bin/besu --config-file=/Node-Install/validator/config/config.toml
Restart=always
RestartSec=30

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Once the kalynode.services file has been saved, this service is started. Run the following commands.

To let the system know that there is a new daemon that must be started at every boot, the following will be executed:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable kalynode.service

To start the service run the following command.

sudo systemctl start kalynode.service

Finally, to ensure that the service is correctly started it will run:

sudo systemctl status kalynode.service

Getting a result like this.

● kaly.service - Kaly Node Service
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/kaly.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2023-03-24 19:34:07 UTC; 6 days ago
   Main PID: 4543 (java)
      Tasks: 80 (limit: 18979)
     Memory: 1.1G
     CGroup: /system.slice/kaly.service
             └─4543 java -Dvertx.disableFileCPResolving=true -Dbesu.home=/home/dev/besu -Dlog4j.shutdownHookEnabled=false -Dlog4j2.formatMsgNoLookups=true -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.logging.l>

Mar 31 00:27:37 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:37.023+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,228 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0x8d24d427e3ed30>
Mar 31 00:27:39 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:39.005+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,229 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0xff9342efd96c96>
Mar 31 00:27:41 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:41.035+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,230 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0xd72bb1107f282f>
Mar 31 00:27:43 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:43.036+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,231 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0xa0f8820b82a734>
Mar 31 00:27:45 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:45.024+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,232 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0x4f8434013a19cf>
Mar 31 00:27:47 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:47.006+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,233 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0xd51527a085ac1a>
Mar 31 00:27:49 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:49.035+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,234 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0x417fbca71bf666>
Mar 31 00:27:51 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:51.036+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,235 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0x905f30530e8d85>
Mar 31 00:27:53 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:53.025+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,236 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0xbd8759087cca61>
Mar 31 00:27:55 sea-sm5038md-h24trf-2-21 besu[4543]: 2023-03-31 00:27:55.007+00:00 | EthScheduler-Workers-0 | INFO  | PersistBlockTask | Imported 268,237 / 0 tx / 0 om / 0 (0.0%) gas / (0x0869b88844d601>

Adding your node as a Validator

At this time existing Validators must propose and vote to add new Validators. You must contact and admin on discord or telegram, providing this information for your node:

1. ENODE: String ENODE from ENODE_ADDRESS (enode://ENODE@IP:30303)

2. Public IP: The external IP of your node.

3. System details: Hosting provider, number of cores (vCPUs), RAM Memory and Hard disk size.

Follow these steps to get the information that you will be asked for:

  • You can find the ENODE_ADDRESS using curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"admin_nodeInfo","params":[],"id":1}' http://127.0.0.1:8545.
  • Get the IP address of your node, as seen from the external world.
$ curl https://ifconfig.me/

You can also get the ENODE_ADDRESS if you have saved the node address from the previous steps

For example if the node public key was:

0xc35c3ec90a8a51fd5703594c6303382f3ae6b2ecb9589bab2c04b3794f2bc3fc2631dabb0c08af795787a6c004d8f532230ae6e9925cbbefb0b28b79295d615f

And if the IP address of your node was:

123.4.56.7

Then the enode URL is:

enode://c35c3ec90a8a51fd5703594c6303382f3ae6b2ecb9589bab2c04b3794f2bc3fc2631dabb0c08af795787a6c004d8f532230ae6e9925cbbefb0b28b79295d615f@123.4.56.7:30303
  • When more than 50% of the existing validators have published a matching proposal, the protocol adds the proposed validator to the validator pool and the validator can begin validating blocks. You will then see your nodeAddress on KalyScan start earning block rewards.

Please NOTE As a Validator you will be expected to participate in Voting for or against new Validators and maintain your server in optimal conditions. Validators who fail to keep there nodes available to validate blocks can be Voted out.

To propose adding a validator, call qbft_proposeValidatorVote, specifying the address of the proposed validator and true.

Example JSON-RPC call

curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"qbft_proposeValidatorVote","params":["0xAE6B557E8Fb62b89F4916F720be55cEb828dBc74", true], "id":1}' <JSON-RPC-endpoint:port>

Optional

In order to control the Validator logs, KalyChain allows you to configure your logs thanks to log4j2, being able to change the format in which you take them out, if you make rotations, if you compress the new files, how many you save and where you save them, etc. To do this, a file called log-config.xml is stored in config.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Configuration status="INFO" monitorInterval="5">

  <Properties>
    <Property name="root.log.level">INFO</Property>
  </Properties>

  <Appenders>
    <Console name="Console" target="SYSTEM_OUT">
        <PatternLayout pattern="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSSZZZ} | %t | %-5level | %c{1} | %msg %throwable{short.message}%n" />
    </Console>
    <RollingFile name="RollingFile" fileName="/kaly/besu/logs/besu.log" filePattern="/kaly/besu/logs/besu-%d{yyyyMMdd}-%i.log.gz" >
        <PatternLayout pattern="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSSZZZ} | %t | %-5level | %c{1} | %msg %throwable{short.message}%n" />
        <!-- Logs in JSON format
        <PatternLayout alwaysWriteExceptions="false" pattern='{"timestamp":"%d{ISO8601}","container":"${hostName}","level":"%level","thread":"%t","class":"%c{1}","message":"%msg","throwable":"%enc{%throwable}{JSON}"}%n'/>
        -->
      <Policies>
        <OnStartupTriggeringPolicy minSize="10240" />
        <TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy />
        <SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy size="50 MB"/>
      </Policies>
      <DefaultRolloverStrategy max="365" />
    </RollingFile>
  </Appenders>

  <Loggers>
    <Root level="${sys:root.log.level}">
      <AppenderRef ref="Console" />
      <AppenderRef ref="RollingFile" />
    </Root>
  </Loggers>

</Configuration>

In this case, the configuration that has been decided on is as follows.

  • Both for the logs displayed on the console and for those stored in the rotated files will be the standard (can be changed to json format or other formats allowed by the tool).
  • It will generate a rotated log file when
    • The Besu Service is restarted whenever the file size is greater than 10 KB (OnStartupTriggeringPolicy minSize="10240").
    • Once a day (TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy).
    • When the log file, if not spent a day, occupies more than 50 MB (SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy size="50 MB").
  • You will save 365 log files in a compressed format. Once the 365 files have passed, you will start deleting the first ones you created (DefaultRolloverStrategy max="365").

If you use this setup for log rotation:
Add the environment variable `LOG4J_CONFIGURATION_FILE` to the kalynode.service file by adding this line.

```bash
Environment=LOG4J_CONFIGURATION_FILE=/Node-Install/validator/config/log-config.xml

You can view the log file you have generated with this command.

tail -f besu.log