Polkadot

Table of Contents

• 1. NOTE
• 2. To play
  • 2.1. Krumme Lanke Testnet
  • 2.2. Development
• 3. Local Two-node Testnet
• 4. Hacking on Polkadot
• 5. License

Implementation of a https://polkadot.network node in Rust.

1. NOTE

We have recently split our implementation of Polkadot from its platform-level component "Substrate". When we split them, we split the Polkadot code off into another repo, leaving the substrate repo to be what used to be Polkadot, along with its branches and releases.

Things will be a little odd for a while. Polkadot PoC-2 remains as a branch v0.2 in the Substrate repo. Polkadot PoC-3 will be in branch v0.3 in the Polkadot repo. To play on the ("Krumme Lanke") testnet, you’ll want the PoC-2 code which is in the Substrate repo. These instructions are up to date with this, but if you see "substrate" and are wondering why you need it for Polkadot, now you know.

2. To play

If you’d like to play with Polkadot, you’ll need to install a client like this one. First, get Rust (1.26.1 or later) and the support software if you don’t already have it:

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
sudo apt install make clang pkg-config libssl-dev

Then, install Polkadot PoC-2:

cargo install --git https://github.com/paritytech/substrate.git --branch v0.2 polkadot

You’ll now have a polkadot binary installed to your PATH. You can run cargo install --git https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot.git polkadot to get the very latest version of Polkadot, but these instructions will not work in that case.

If you want a specific version of polkadot, say 0.2.5, you may run cargo install --git https://github.com/paritytech/substrate.git --tag v0.2.5 polkadot.

2.1. Krumme Lanke Testnet

You will connect to the global Krumme Lanke testnet by default. To do this, just use:

polkadot

If you want to do anything on it (not that there’s much to do), then you’ll need to get some Krumme Lanke DOTs. Ask in the Polkadot watercooler.

2.2. Development

You can run a simple single-node development "network" on your machine by running in a terminal:

polkadot --dev

You can muck around by cloning and building the http://github.com/paritytech/polka-ui and http://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-ui or just heading to https://polkadot.js.org/apps.

3. Local Two-node Testnet

If you want to see the multi-node consensus algorithm in action locally, then you can create a local testnet. You’ll need two terminals open. In one, run:

polkadot --chain=local --validator --key Alice -d /tmp/alice

and in the other, run:

polkadot --chain=local --validator --key Bob -d /tmp/bob --port 30334 --bootnodes '/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/30333/p2p/ALICE_BOOTNODE_ID_HERE'

Ensure you replace ALICE_BOOTNODE_ID_HERE with the node ID from the output of the first terminal.

4. Hacking on Polkadot

If you’d actually like hack on Polkadot, you can just grab the source code and build it. Ensure you have Rust and the support software installed:

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
rustup update nightly
rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown --toolchain nightly
rustup update stable
cargo install --git https://github.com/alexcrichton/wasm-gc
sudo apt install cmake pkg-config libssl-dev git

Then, grab the Polkadot source code:

git clone https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot.git
cd polkadot

Then build the code:

./scripts/build.sh  # Builds the WebAssembly binaries
cargo build # Builds all native code

You can run the tests if you like:

cargo test --all

You can start a development chain with:

cargo run -- --dev

doc/docker.adoc

doc/shell-completion.adoc

doc/packages.adoc

doc/networks/networks.adoc

CONTRIBUTING.adoc

5. License

link:LICENSE[]