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4. Maintainers

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wind edited this page Nov 26, 2020 · 8 revisions

Overview

Here is a guide to set up a node and ways to participate in the Acala Network.

Mandala Test Network Maintainers Guide

Full Node

Mandala Test Network is a risk-free and value-free playground, purely for testing out functionalities and "explosive" experiments. There is no network value nor rewards. However you are welcome to run a node and join the network, to try it out, prepare for Karura Network (that will join Kusama with network value) and Acala Mainnet, or just for the love of it.

Install Rust

Once you choose your cloud service provider and set-up your new server, the first thing you will do is install Rust.

If you have never installed Rust, you should do this first. This command will fetch the latest version of Rust and install it.

# Install
curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
# Configure
source ~/.cargo/env

Otherwise, if you have already installed Rust, run the following command to make sure you are using the latest version.

rustup update

Configure the Rust toolchain to default to the latest stable version:

rustup update stable
rustup default stable

If the compilation fails, you can try to switch to nightly

rustup update nightly
rustup default nightly

Clone and Build

The AcalaNetwork/acala repo's master branch contains the latest Acala code.

git clone https://github.com/AcalaNetwork/Acala.git
cd Acala 
make init
make build

Alternatively, if you wish to use a specific release, you can check out a specific tag (v0.5.1 in the example below):

git clone https://github.com/AcalaNetwork/Acala.git
cd Acala 
git checkout tags/v0.5.1
make init
make build

Development

To type check:

make check

To purge old chain data:

make purge

To purge old chain data and run

make restart

Update ORML

make update

Run

he built binary will be in the target/release folder, called acala.

./target/release --chain mandala --name "My node's name"

Use the --help flag to find out which flags you can use when running the node. For example, if connecting to your node remotely, you'll probably want to use --ws-external and --rpc-cors all.

The syncing process will take a while depending on your bandwidth, processing power, disk speed and RAM. On a $10 DigitalOcean droplet, the process can complete in some 36 hours.

Congratulations, you're now syncing with Acala. Keep in mind that the process is identical when using any other Substrate chain.

Running an Archive Node

When running as a simple sync node (above), only the state of the past 256 blocks will be kept. When validating, it defaults to archive mode. To keep the full state use the --pruning flag:

./target/release/acala --name "My node's name" --pruning archive --chain mandala

It is possible to almost quadruple synchronization speed by using an additional flag: --wasm-execution Compiled. Note that this uses much more CPU and RAM, so it should be turned off after the node is in sync.

Using Docker

Finally, you can use Docker to run your node in a container. Doing this is a bit more advanced so it's best left up to those that either already have familiarity with docker, or have completed the other set-up instructions in this guide. If you would like to connect to your node's WebSockets ensure that you run you node with the --rpc-external and --ws-external commands.

Install docker with Linux: wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh

If you have docker installed, you can use it to start your node without needing to build from the code. Here is the command

docker run -d --restart=always -p 30333:30333 -p 9933:9933 -p 9944:9944 -v node-data:/acala/data acala/acala-node:latest --chain mandala --base-path=/acala/data/01-001 --ws-port 9944 --rpc-port 9933 --port 30333 --ws-external --rpc-external --ws-max-connections 1000 --rpc-cors=all --unsafe-ws-external --unsafe-rpc-external --pruning=archive --name "Name of Telemetry"

Proof-of-Liveness (PoL) Node (Coming Soon)

While the Acala Network will leverage Polkadot’s shared security and do not need dedicated validators itself, it will still require what we call Proof-of-Liveness (PoL) nodes to maintain the operation of the Acala network to perform part or all of the following actions

  1. As Collator to propose new blocks to validators for verification
  2. As Network Operator to perform off-chain work such as liquidating unsafe positions
  3. Optionally as Oracle Operator

For Karura Network and Acala Mainnet, there will be incentives for becoming a PoL node. There is reward for running PoL node as a Collator and Network Operator, and additional reward for also running as Oracle Operator.

The initial period of Karura and Acala network will be PoA, and gradually upgraded to be permission-less network. Oracle Operation will remain PoA until we have definitively secure decentralized solutions.

If you are interest in becoming a collator/liveness provider for the Acala Network, and joining the wider Acala ecosystem, please fill in this form.

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