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Cardchain node setup for testnet

Official documentation:

• Validator setup instructions

Explorer:

• https://Cardchain.explorers.guru/

Usefull tools and references

To set up monitoring for your validator node navigate to Set up monitoring and alerting for Cardchain validator

To migrate your validator to another machine read Migrate your validator to another machine

Hardware Requirements

Like any Cosmos-SDK chain, the hardware requirements are pretty modest.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

• 3x CPUs; the faster clock speed the better
• 4GB RAM
• 80GB Disk
• Permanent Internet connection (traffic will be minimal during testnet; 10Mbps will be plenty - for production at least 100Mbps is expected)

Recommended Hardware Requirements

• 4x CPUs; the faster clock speed the better
• 8GB RAM
• 200GB of storage (SSD or NVME)
• Permanent Internet connection (traffic will be minimal during testnet; 10Mbps will be plenty - for production at least 100Mbps is expected)

Set up your Cardchain fullnode

Option 1 (automatic)

You can setup your Cardchain fullnode in few minutes by using automated script below. It will prompt you to input your validator node name!

wget -O cardchain.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kj89/testnet_manuals/main/cardchain/cardchain.sh && chmod +x cardchain.sh && ./cardchain.sh

Option 2 (manual)

You can follow manual guide if you better prefer setting up node manually

Post installation

When installation is finished please load variables into system

source $HOME/.bash_profile

Next you have to make sure your validator is syncing blocks. You can use command below to check synchronization status

Cardchain status 2>&1 | jq .SyncInfo

(OPTIONAL) Disable and cleanup indexing

indexer="null"
sed -i -e "s/^indexer *=.*/indexer = \"$indexer\"/" $HOME/.Cardchain/config/config.toml
sudo systemctl restart Cardchain
sleep 3
sudo rm -rf $HOME/.Cardchain/data/tx_index.db

(OPTIONAL) State Sync

You can state sync your node in minutes by running commands below.

N/A

Create wallet

To create new wallet you can use command below. Don’t forget to save the mnemonic

Cardchain keys add $WALLET

(OPTIONAL) To recover your wallet using seed phrase

Cardchain keys add $WALLET --recover

To get current list of wallets

Cardchain keys list

Save wallet info

Add wallet and valoper address into system variables

CARDCHAIN_WALLET_ADDRESS=$(Cardchain keys show $WALLET -a)
CARDCHAIN_VALOPER_ADDRESS=$(Cardchain keys show $WALLET --bech val -a)
echo 'export CARDCHAIN_WALLET_ADDRESS='${CARDCHAIN_WALLET_ADDRESS} >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo 'export CARDCHAIN_VALOPER_ADDRESS='${CARDCHAIN_VALOPER_ADDRESS} >> $HOME/.bash_profile
source $HOME/.bash_profile

Fund your wallet

curl -X POST https://cardchain.crowdcontrol.network/faucet/ -d "{\"address\": \"$CARDCHAIN_WALLET_ADDRESS\"}"

Create validator

Before creating validator please make sure that you have at least 1 kuji (1 kuji is equal to 1000000 ubpf) and your node is synchronized

To check your wallet balance:

Cardchain query bank balances $CARDCHAIN_WALLET_ADDRESS

If your wallet does not show any balance than probably your node is still syncing. Please wait until it finish to synchronize and then continue

To create your validator run command below

Cardchain tx staking create-validator \
  --amount 1000000ubpf \
  --from $WALLET \
  --commission-max-change-rate "0.01" \
  --commission-max-rate "0.2" \
  --commission-rate "0.07" \
  --min-self-delegation "1" \
  --pubkey  $(Cardchain tendermint show-validator) \
  --moniker $NODENAME \
  --chain-id $CARDCHAIN_CHAIN_ID

Security

To protect you keys please make sure you follow basic security rules

Set up ssh keys for authentication

Good tutorial on how to set up ssh keys for authentication to your server can be found here

Basic Firewall security

Start by checking the status of ufw.

sudo ufw status

Sets the default to allow outgoing connections, deny all incoming except ssh and 26656. Limit SSH login attempts

sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw allow ssh/tcp
sudo ufw limit ssh/tcp
sudo ufw allow ${CARDCHAIN_PORT}656,${CARDCHAIN_PORT}660/tcp
sudo ufw enable

Monitoring

To monitor and get alerted about your validator health status you can use my guide on Set up monitoring and alerting for Cardchain validator

Calculate synchronization time

This script will help you to estimate how much time it will take to fully synchronize your node
It measures average blocks per minute that are being synchronized for period of 5 minutes and then gives you results

wget -O synctime.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kj89/testnet_manuals/main/cardchain/tools/synctime.py && python3 ./synctime.py

Get list of validators

Cardchain q staking validators -oj --limit=3000 | jq '.validators[] | select(.status=="BOND_STATUS_BONDED")' | jq -r '(.tokens|tonumber/pow(10; 6)|floor|tostring) + " \t " + .description.moniker' | sort -gr | nl

Get currently connected peer list with ids

curl -sS http://localhost:${CARDCHAIN_PORT}657/net_info | jq -r '.result.peers[] | "\(.node_info.id)@\(.remote_ip):\(.node_info.listen_addr)"' | awk -F ':' '{print $1":"$(NF)}'

Usefull commands

Service management

Check logs

journalctl -fu Cardchain -o cat

Start service

sudo systemctl start Cardchain

Stop service

sudo systemctl stop Cardchain

Restart service

sudo systemctl restart Cardchain

Node info

Synchronization info

Cardchain status 2>&1 | jq .SyncInfo

Validator info

Cardchain status 2>&1 | jq .ValidatorInfo

Node info

Cardchain status 2>&1 | jq .NodeInfo

Show node id

Cardchain tendermint show-node-id

Wallet operations

List of wallets

Cardchain keys list

Recover wallet

Cardchain keys add $WALLET --recover

Delete wallet

Cardchain keys delete $WALLET

Get wallet balance

Cardchain query bank balances $CARDCHAIN_WALLET_ADDRESS

Transfer funds

Cardchain tx bank send $CARDCHAIN_WALLET_ADDRESS <TO_CARDCHAIN_WALLET_ADDRESS> 10000000ubpf

Voting

Cardchain tx gov vote 1 yes --from $WALLET --chain-id=$CARDCHAIN_CHAIN_ID

Staking, Delegation and Rewards

Delegate stake

Cardchain tx staking delegate $CARDCHAIN_VALOPER_ADDRESS 10000000ubpf --from=$WALLET --chain-id=$CARDCHAIN_CHAIN_ID --gas=auto

Redelegate stake from validator to another validator

Cardchain tx staking redelegate <srcValidatorAddress> <destValidatorAddress> 10000000ubpf --from=$WALLET --chain-id=$CARDCHAIN_CHAIN_ID --gas=auto

Withdraw all rewards

Cardchain tx distribution withdraw-all-rewards --from=$WALLET --chain-id=$CARDCHAIN_CHAIN_ID --gas=auto

Withdraw rewards with commision

Cardchain tx distribution withdraw-rewards $CARDCHAIN_VALOPER_ADDRESS --from=$WALLET --commission --chain-id=$CARDCHAIN_CHAIN_ID

Validator management

Edit validator

Cardchain tx staking edit-validator \
  --moniker=$NODENAME \
  --identity=<your_keybase_id> \
  --website="<your_website>" \
  --details="<your_validator_description>" \
  --chain-id=$CARDCHAIN_CHAIN_ID \
  --from=$WALLET

Unjail validator

Cardchain tx slashing unjail \
  --broadcast-mode=block \
  --from=$WALLET \
  --chain-id=$CARDCHAIN_CHAIN_ID \
  --gas=auto

Delete node

This commands will completely remove node from server. Use at your own risk!

sudo systemctl stop Cardchain
sudo systemctl disable Cardchain
sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/Cardchain* -rf
sudo rm $(which Cardchain) -rf
sudo rm $HOME/.Cardchain* -rf
sudo rm $HOME/Cardchain -rf
sed -i '/CARDCHAIN_/d' ~/.bash_profile