Running a Polkadot node

Polkadot is a sharded multichain network, meaning it has the ability to process many transactions on several chains in parallel. Chains connected to Polkadot are called “parachains” because they run in parallel on the network.

On Polkadot, each blockchain has a unique design optimized for a specific use case. That means blockchains can be adapted depending on the service they provide, improving efficiency and security by leaving out unnecessary code. By building on the Substrate development framework, teams can develop and customize their blockchain faster and more efficiently than ever before.

“Running a node is hard”… or is it?

We’ve all heard the story about how hard it is to run a node and that you need a lot of technical skills to succeed.

AVADO anticipates these problems and is a game-changer in this field. The creation of the new Polkadot package is a true example of its philosophy; “support decentralization and make Web3 applications widely distributed in the most user-friendly way”. The barrier for people to participate in their favorite network finally disappears.

AVADO is an infrastructure provider for blockchains and dApps. The plug & play hardware can run decentralized applications (even different ones at the same time!)
By starting with a user interface that everybody can understand, you can choose what network to support. AVADO offers a very convenient way of participating in the network — thereby contributing to its strength and success.

Today we are releasing our latest version of the Polkadot Node package. It allows you — as the name implies — to start experimenting with the Polkadot ecosystem by running a Polkadot node. Our goal is to make it easy for you to quickly spin up and run your own development node — or create a consortium of nodes that run your own chain.

You can start integrating your client dApps on your own Polkadot node today using this package — it will provide you with the interface to talk to the node.

Get started with Polkadot on AVADO

If you want to spin up a Polkadot node, simply go to your AVADO DAppStore page and click the Polkadot Node package.

After installing — starting your node is literally one click away!

Once it is installed you can use the RPC endpoint at ws://my.polkadotcustom.avado.dnp.dappnode.eth:9944/ and you are connected!

To be clear, this node is not connected to any other nodes in standalone mode, it will not validate a public Polkadot network and is not suited for staking on Polkadot. If you want to run multiple nodes you should set up a consortium chain, which is explained in the next section.

Set up a consortium chain of Polkadot nodes

Why not choose to run multiple nodes that run one chain? Just follow the wizard to set up node after node. Each of the participants in your consortium will run their own node and together reach consensus over the network’s state.

With your consortium set up you can use the RPC endpoint on any of the nodes in the network. Since they are all syncing the same private chain, the changes will be propagated throughout all the nodes.

Use cases

Running consortium Polkadot nodes can be very useful in many different situations. Here are the most common use cases:

• Testing environment: Simply run a private chain to build, test your product ideas, or explore the Polkadot API’s. This will run Polkadot out of the box.
• Too shy to go public yet? Maybe you are not yet at the stage where you feel anyone can use your product, but you want some people to try it out. Make it a live version but for a Closed User Group.
• Security checks: Do you need to run a security check on a smart contract system you want to deploy soon, or which is actually already live? Of course, you don’t want anyone to see the vulnerabilities in real-time, especially when your system is already live. So test the hell out of it in your private network and then deploy the battle-tested version to the Live net.

What AVADO hardware do you need?

If you are eager to get started, we recommend the i2 hardware for running the Polkadot package. The Pentium processor and the 8GB memory is strong enough to run Polkadot as a single node. If you connect several i2's you can easily run your own chain.

Or if you want to use Polkadot but also want to experiment with other chains, the i3 model is exactly what you need. It has a stronger processor that guarantees you to run several chains in sync.

Ready for something more? By using the i5 or the i7 (coming soon) you have the possibility of using and staking on other chains (PoS) at the same time. Both have very strong CPU’s and plenty of memory. The i7 is definitely the most powerful machine and with its 2TB SSD disk, you’ll have more than enough disk space for the next years to come.

Create your own package

If you want to create your own version of the package — please go to AvadoDServer/AVADO-DNP-Polkadot-custom and fork our repository.

Any questions? You can reach us in our telegram group.
Please tweet your experiences and tag @AvadoCloud

Discover more on the Polkadot website, or on their wiki.