Local Setup

Requirements

Refer to Installation to install Credit Smart Chain.

Overview

In this guide, our goal is to establish a workingpolygon-edge blockchain network working with IBFT consensus protocol. The blockchain network will consist of 4 nodes of whom all 4 are validator nodes, and as such are eligible for both proposing block, and validating blocks that came from other proposers. All 4 nodes will run on the same machine, as the idea of this guide is to give you a fully functional IBFT cluster in the least amount of time.

To achieve that, we will guide you through 4 easy steps:

  1. Initializing data directories will generate both the validator keys for each of the 4 nodes, and initialize empty blockchain data directories. The validator keys are important as we need to bootstrap the genesis block with the initial set of validators using these keys.

  2. Preparing the connection string for the bootnode will be the vital information for every node we will run as to which node to connect to when starting for the first time.

  3. Generating the genesis.json file will require as input both the validator keys generated in step 1 used for setting the initial validators of the network in the genesis block and the bootnode connection string from step 2.

  4. Running all the nodes is the end goal of this guide and will be the last step we do, we will instruct the nodes which data directory to use and where to find the genesis.json which bootstraps the initial network state.

As all four nodes will be running on localhost, during the setup process it is expected that all the data directories for each of the nodes are in the same parent directory.

Step 1: Initialize data folders for IBFT and generate validator keys

In order to get up and running with IBFT, you need to initialize the data folders, one for each node:

polygon-edge secrets init --data-dir test-chain-1
polygon-edge secrets init --data-dir test-chain-2
polygon-edge secrets init --data-dir test-chain-3
polygon-edge secrets init --data-dir test-chain-4

Each of these commands will print the validator key and the node ID. You will need the Node ID of the first node for the next step.

Step 2: Prepare the multiaddr connection string for the bootnode

For a node to successfully establish connectivity, it must know which bootnode server to connect to in order to gain information about all the remaining nodes on the network. The bootnode is sometimes also known as the rendezvous server in p2p jargon.

bootnode is not a special instance of the credit-smart-chain node. Every credit-smart-chain node can serve as a bootnode, but every credit-smart-chain node needs to have a set of bootnodes specified which will be contacted to provide information on how to connect with all remaining nodes in the network.

To create the connection string for specifying the bootnode, we will need to conform to the multiaddr format:

/ip4/<ip_address>/tcp/<port>/p2p/<node_id>

In this guide, we will treat the first and second nodes as the bootnodes for all other nodes. What will happen in this scenario is that nodes that connect to the node 1 or node 2 will get information on how to connect to one another through the mutually contacted bootnode.

Since we are running on localhost, it is safe to assume that the <ip_address> is 127.0.0.1.

For the <port> we will use 10001 since we will configure the libp2p server for node 1 to listen on this port later.

And lastly, we need the <node_id> which we can get from the output of the previously ran command polygon-edge secrets init --data-dir test-chain-1 command (which was used to generate keys and data directories for the node1)

After the assembly, the multiaddr connection string to the node 1 which we will use as the bootnode will look something like this (only the <node_id> which is at the end should be different):

/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/10001/p2p/16Uiu2HAmJxxH1tScDX2rLGSU9exnuvZKNM9SoK3v315azp68DLPW

Similarly, we construct the multiaddr for second bootnode as shown below

/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/20001/p2p/16Uiu2HAmS9Nq4QAaEiogE4ieJFUYsoH28magT7wSvJPpfUGBj3Hq

Step 3: Generate the genesis file with the 4 nodes as validators

polygon-edge genesis --consensus ibft --ibft-validators-prefix-path test-chain- --bootnode /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/10001/p2p/16Uiu2HAmJxxH1tScDX2rLGSU9exnuvZKNM9SoK3v315azp68DLPW --bootnode /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/20001/p2p/16Uiu2HAmS9Nq4QAaEiogE4ieJFUYsoH28magT7wSvJPpfUGBj3Hq

What this command does:

  • The --ibft-validators-prefix-path sets the prefix folder path to the one specified which IBFT in Credit Smart Chain can use. This directory is used to house the consensus/ folder, where the validator's private key is kept. The validator's public key is needed in order to build the genesis file - the initial list of bootstrap nodes. This flag only makes sense when setting up the network on localhost, as in a real-world scenario we cannot expect all the nodes' data directories to be on the same filesystem from where we can easily read their public keys.

  • The --bootnode sets the address of the bootnode that will enable the nodes to find each other. We will use the multiaddr string of the node 1, as mentioned in step 2.

The result of this command is the genesis.json file which contains the genesis block of our new blockchain, with the predefined validator set and the configuration for which node to contact first in order to establish connectivity.

Step 4: Run all the clients

Because we are attempting to run a Credit Smart Chain network consisting of 4 nodes all on the same machine, we need to take care to avoid port conflicts. This is why we will use the following reasoning for determining the listening ports of each server of a node:

  • 10000 for the gRPC server of node 1, 20000 for the GRPC server of node 2, etc.

  • 10001 for the libp2p server of node 1, 20001 for the libp2p server of node 2, etc.

  • 10002 for the JSON-RPC server of node 1, 20002 for the JSON-RPC server of node 2, etc.

To run the first client (note the port 10001 since it was used as a part of the libp2p multiaddr in step 2 alongside node 1's Node ID):

polygon-edge server --data-dir ./test-chain-1 --chain genesis.json --grpc-address :10000 --libp2p :10001 --jsonrpc :10002 --seal

To run the second client:

polygon-edge server --data-dir ./test-chain-2 --chain genesis.json --grpc-address :20000 --libp2p :20001 --jsonrpc :20002 --seal

To run the third client:

polygon-edge server --data-dir ./test-chain-3 --chain genesis.json --grpc-address :30000 --libp2p :30001 --jsonrpc :30002 --seal

To run the fourth client:

polygon-edge server --data-dir ./test-chain-4 --chain genesis.json --grpc-address :40000 --libp2p :40001 --jsonrpc :40002 --seal

To briefly go over what has been done so far:

  • The directory for the client data has been specified to be ./test-chain-*

  • The GRPC servers have been started on ports 10000, 20000, 30000 and 40000, for each node respectively

  • The libp2p servers have been started on ports 10001, 20001, 30001 and 40001, for each node respectively

  • The JSON-RPC servers have been started on ports 10002, 20002, 30002 and 40002, for each node respectively

  • The seal flag means that the node which is being started is going to participate in block sealing

  • The chain flag specifies which genesis file should be used for chain configuration

The structure of the genesis file is covered in the CLI Commands section.

After running the previous commands, you have set up a 4 node Credit Smart Chain network, capable of sealing blocks and recovering from node failure.

Step 5: Interact with the credit-smart-chain network

Now that you've set up at least 1 running client, you can go ahead and interact with the blockchain using the account you premined above and by specifying the JSON-RPC URL to any of the 4 nodes:

  • Node 1: http://localhost:10002

  • Node 2: http://localhost:20002

  • Node 3: http://localhost:30002

  • Node 4: http://localhost:40002

Follow this guide to issue operator commands to the newly built cluster: How to query operator information (the GRPC ports for the cluster we have built are 10000/20000/30000/40000 for each node respectively)

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