bitumstakepool

bitumstakepool is a web application which coordinates generating 1-of-2 multisig addresses on a pool of bitumwallet servers so users can purchase proof-of-stake tickets on the Bitum network and have the pool of wallet servers vote on their behalf when the ticket is selected.

Architecture

• It is highly recommended to use 3 bitumd+bitumwallet+stakepoold nodes for production use on mainnet.
• The architecture is subject to change in the future to lessen the dependence on bitumwallet and MySQL.

Git Tip Release notes

• The handling of tickets considered invalid because they pay too-low-of-a-fee is now integrated directly into bitumstakepool and stakepoold.
  • Users who pass both the adminIPs and the new adminUserIDs checks will see a new link on the menu to the new administrative add tickets page.
  • Tickets are added to the MySQL database and then stakepoold is triggered to pull an update from the database and reload its config.
  • To accommodate changes to the gRPC API, bitumstakepool/stakepoold had their API versions changed to require/advertize 4.0.0. This requires performing the upgrade steps outlined below.
• KNOWN ISSUE Total tickets count reported by stakepoold may not be totally accurate until low fee tickets that have been added to the database can be marked as voted. This will be resolved by future work. (#201).

Git Tip Upgrade Guide

1. Announce maintenance and shut down bitumstakepool.
2. Upgrade Go to the latest stable version if necessary/possible.
3. Perform an upgrade of each stakepoold instance one at a time.
   • Stop stakepoold.
   • Build and restart stakepoold.
4. Edit bitumstakepool.conf and set adminIPs/adminUserIDs appropriately to include the administrative staff for whom you wish give the ability to add low fee tickets for voting.
5. Upgrade and start bitumstakepool after setting adminUserIDs.
6. Announce maintenance complete after verifying functionality.

1.1.1 Release Notes

• bitumd has a new agenda and the vote version in bitumwallet has been incremented to v5 on mainnet.
• stakepoold
  • The ticket list is now maintained by doing an initial GetTicket RPC call and then subtracts/adds tickets by processing SpentAndMissed/New ticket notifications from bitumwallet. This approach is much faster than the old method of calling StakePoolUserInfo for each user.
  • Bug fixes to the above commit and to accommodate changes in bitumwallet.
• Status page
  • StatusUnauthorized error is now thrown rather than a generic one when accessing the page as a non-admin.
  • Updated to use new design.
  • Synced bitumwallet walletinfo field list.
• Tickets page
  • Performance was greatly improved by skipping display of historic tickets.
  • Handles users that have only low fee/invalid tickets properly.
  • Expired tickets are now separated from missed.
• General markup improvements.
  • Removed mention of creating a voting account as it has been deprecated.
  • Instructions were further clarified and updated to strongly recommend the use of Bitumiton/Paymetheus.
  • Fragments of invalid markup were fixed.

1.1.1 Upgrade Guide

1. Announce maintenance and shut down bitumstakepool.
2. Perform upgrades on each bitumd+bitumwallet+stakepoold voting cluster one at a time.
   • Stop stakepoold, bitumwallet, and bitumd.
   • Upgrade bitumd, bitumwallet to 1.1.0 release binaries or git. If compiling from source, Go 1.9 is recommended to pick up improvements to the Golang runtime.
   • Restart bitumd, bitumwallet.
   • Upgrade stakepoold.
   • Start stakepoold.
3. Upgrade and start bitumstakepool. If you are maintaining a fork, note that you need to update the bitumd/chaincfg dependency to a revision that contains the new agenda.
4. bitumstakepool will reset the votebits for all users to 1 when it detects the new vote version via stakepoold.
5. Announce maintenance complete after verifying functionality. If possible, also announce that a new voting agenda is available and users must login to set their preferences for the new agenda.

Requirements

• Go 1.10.5 or newer (1.11 is recommended).
• MySQL
• Nginx or other web server to proxy to bitumstakepool

Installation

Build from Source

Building or updating from source requires only an installation of Go (instructions). It is recommended to add $GOPATH/bin to your PATH at this point.

Clone the bitumstakepool repository into any folder and follow the instructions below for your version of Go.

Building with Go 1.11

Go 1.11 introduced native support for modules, a new dependency management approach, that obviates the need for third party tooling such as dep.

Usage is simple, and nothing is required except Go 1.11. If building in a folder under GOPATH, it is necessary to explicitly build with modules enabled:

GO111MODULE=on go build

If building outside of GOPATH, modules are automatically enabled, and go build is sufficient.

The go tool will process the source code and automatically download dependencies. If the dependencies are configured correctly, there will be no modifications to the go.mod and go.sum files.

Building with Go 1.10

Module-enabled builds with Go 1.10 require the vgo command. Follow the same procedures as if you were using Go 1.11, but replacing go with vgo.

NOTE: The dep tool is no longer supported. If you must use Go 1.10, install and use vgo. If possible, upgrade to Go 1.11.

Components

The frontend server (bitumstakepool) and the backend daemon (stakepoold) are built separately. Since module-enabled builds no longer require building under $GOPATH, the following instructions use the placeholder {{YOUR_GO_MODULE_PATH}} to refer to wherever you checkout your Go code.

Frontend - bitumstakepool

Build bitumstakepool and copy it to the web server.

$ cd {{YOUR_GO_MODULE_PATH}}/github.com/bitum-project/bitumstakepool
$ go build

Backend - stakepoold

Build stakepoold and copy it to each voting wallet node.

$ cd {{YOUR_GO_MODULE_PATH}}/src/github.com/bitum-project/bitumstakepool/backend/stakepoold
$ go build

Updating

To update an existing source tree, pull the latest changes and install the matching dependencies:

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/bitum-project/bitumstakepool
$ git pull
$ dep ensure
$ go build
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/bitum-project/bitumstakepool/backend/stakepoold
$ go build

Setup

Pre-requisites

These instructions assume you are familiar with bitumd/bitumwallet.

• Create basic bitumd/bitumwallet/bitumctl config files with usernames, passwords, rpclisten, and network set appropriately within them or run example commands with additional flags as necessary.

• Build/install bitumd and bitumwallet from latest master.

• Run bitumd instances and let them fully sync.

Voting service fees/cold wallet

• Setup a new wallet for receiving payment for voting service fees. This should be completely separate from the voting service infrastructure.

$ bitumwallet --create
$ bitumwallet

• Get the master pubkey for the account you wish to use. This will be needed to configure bitumwallet and bitumstakepool.

$ bitumctl --wallet createnewaccount teststakepoolfees
$ bitumctl --wallet getmasterpubkey teststakepoolfees

• Mark 10000 addresses in use for the account so the wallet will recognize transactions to those addresses. Fees from UserId 1 will go to address 1, UserId 2 to address 2, and so on.

$ bitumctl --wallet accountsyncaddressindex teststakepoolfees 0 10000

Voting service voting wallets

• Create the wallets. All wallets should have the same seed. Backup the seed for disaster recovery!

$ bitumwallet --create

• Start a properly configured bitumwallet and unlock it. See sample-bitumwallet.conf.

$ bitumwallet

• Get the master pubkey from the default account. This will be used for votingwalletextpub in bitumstakepool.conf.

$ bitumctl --wallet getmasterpubkey default

MySQL

• Install, configure, and start MySQL
• Add stakepool user and create the stakepool database

$ mysql -uroot -ppassword

MySQL> CREATE USER 'stakepool'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
MySQL> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'stakepool'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
MySQL> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MySQL> CREATE DATABASE stakepool;

Nginx/web server

• Adapt sample-nginx.conf or setup a different web server in a proxy configuration.

stakepoold setup

• Adapt sample-stakepoold.conf and run stakepoold.

bitumstakepool setup

• Create the .bitumstakepool directory and copy bitumwallet certs to it:

$ mkdir ~/.bitumstakepool
$ cd ~/.bitumstakepool
$ scp walletserver1:~/.bitumwallet/rpc.cert wallet1.cert
$ scp walletserver2:~/.bitumwallet/rpc.cert wallet2.cert
$ scp walletserver1:~/.stakepoold/rpc.cert stakepoold1.cert
$ scp walletserver2:~/.stakepoold/rpc.cert stakepoold2.cert

• Copy sample config and edit appropriately.

$ cp -p sample-bitumstakepool.conf bitumstakepool.conf

Running

The easiest way to run the stakepool code is to run it directly from the root of the source tree:

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/bitum-project/bitumstakepool
$ go build
$ ./bitumstakepool

If you wish to run bitumstakepool from a different directory you will need to change publicpath and templatepath from their relative paths to an absolute path.

Development

If you are modifying templates, sending the USR1 signal to the bitumstakepool process will trigger a template reload.

Operations

• bitumstakepool will connect to the database or error out if it cannot do so.

• bitumstakepool will create the stakepool.Users table automatically if it doesn't exist.

• bitumstakepool attempts to connect to all of the wallet servers on startup or error out if it cannot do so.

• bitumstakepool takes a user's pubkey, validates it, calls getnewaddress on all the wallet servers, then createmultisig, and finally importscript. If any of these RPCs fail or returns inconsistent results, the RPC client built-in to bitumstakepool will shut down and will not operate until it has been restarted. Wallets should be verified to be in sync before restarting.

• User API Tokens have an issuer field set to baseURL from the configuration file. Changing the baseURL requires all API Tokens to be re-generated.

Adding Invalid Tickets

For Newer versions / git tip

If a user pays an incorrect fee, login as an account that meets the adminUserIps and adminUserIds restrictions and click the 'Add Low Fee Tickets' link in the menu. You will be presented with a list of tickets that are suitable for adding. Check the appropriate one(s) and click the submit button. Upon success, you should see the stakepoold logs reflect that the new tickets were processed.

For v1.1.1 and below

If a user pays an incorrect fee you may add their tickets like so (requires bitumd running with txindex=1):

bitumctl --wallet stakepooluserinfo "MultiSigAddress" | grep -Pzo '(?<="invalid": \[)[^\]]*' | tr -d , | xargs -Itickethash bitumctl --wallet getrawtransaction tickethash | xargs -Itickethex bitumctl --wallet addticket "tickethex"

Backups, monitoring, security considerations

• MySQL should be backed up often and regularly (probably at least hourly). Backups should be transferred off-site. If using binary backups, do a test restore. For .sql files, verify visually.

• A monitoring system with alerting should be pointed at bitumstakepool and tested/verified to be operating properly. There is a hidden /status page which throws 500 if the RPC client is shutdown. If your monitoring system supports it, add additional points of verification such as: checking that the /stats page loads and has expected information in it, create a test account and setup automated login testing, etc.

• Wallets should never be used for anything else (they should always have a balance of 0).

Disaster Recovery

Always keep at least one wallet voting while performing maintenance / restoration!

• In the case of a total failure of a wallet server:
  • Restore the failed wallet(s) from seed
  • Restart the bitumstakepool process to allow automatic syncing to occur.

IRC

• irc.freenode.net
• channel #bitum

Issue Tracker

The integrated github issue tracker is used for this project.

License

bitumstakepool is licensed under the copyfree MIT/X11 and ISC Licenses.

Version History

• 1.1.0 - Architecture change.
  • Per-ticket votebits were removed in favor of per-user voting preferences. A voting page was added and the API upgraded to v2 to support getting and setting user voting preferences.
  • Addresses from the wallet servers which are needed for generating the 1-of-2 multisig ticket address are now derived from the new votingwalletextpub config option. This removes the need to call getnewaddress on each wallet.
  • An experimental daemon (stakepoold) that votes according to user preference is available for testing on testnet. This daemon is not for use on mainnet at this time.
• 1.0.0 - Major changes/improvements.
  • API is now at v1 status. API Tokens are generated for all users with a verified email address when upgrading. Tokens are generated for new users on demand when visiting the Settings page which displays their token. Authenticated users may use the API to submit a public key address and to retrieve ticket purchasing information. The voting service's stats are also available through the API without authentication.
• 0.0.4 - Major changes/improvements.
  • config.toml is no longer required as the options in that file have been migrated to bitumstakepool.conf.
  • Automatic syncing of scripts, tickets, and vote bits is now performed at startup. Syncing of vote bits is a long process and can be skipped with the SkipVoteBitsSync flag/configuration value.
  • Temporary wallet connectivity errors are now handled much more gracefully.
  • A preliminary v0.1 API was added.
• 0.0.3 - More expected/basic web application functionality added.
  • SMTPHost now defaults to an empty string so a voting service can be used for development or testing purposes without a configured mail server. The contents of the emails are sent through the logger so links can still be followed.
  • Upon sign up, users now have an email sent with a validation link. They will not be able to sign in until they verify.
  • New settings page that allows users to change their email address/password.
  • Bug fix to HeightRegistered migration for users who signed up but never submitted an address would not be able to login.
• 0.0.2 - Minor improvements/feature addition
  • The importscript RPC is now called with the current block height at the time of user registration. Previously, importscript triggered a rescan for transactions from the genesis block. Since the user just registered, there won't be any transactions present. A new HeightRegistered column is automatically added to the Users table. A default value of 15346 is used for existing users who already had a multisigscript generated. This can be adjusted to a more reasonable value for you pool by running the following MySQL query: UPDATE Users SET HeightRegistered = NEWVALUE WHERE HeightRegistered = 15346;
  • Users may now reset their password by specifying an email address and clicking a link that they will receive via email. You will need to add a proper configuration for your mail server for it to work properly. The various SMTP options can be seen in sample-bitumstakepool.conf.
  • User instructions on the address and ticket pages were updated.
  • SpentBy link added to the voted tickets display.
• 0.0.1 - Initial release for mainnet operations