Noob’s Guide to Building a Validator Node on IDEP Network

IDEP (Intergalactic Data Exchange Protocol) is a scalable Proof-of-Stake blockchain built using Cosmos SDK, which utilizes the Tendermint Core consensus engine.

Currently their testnet is live, and they need validators! There will even be incentive for folks who contribute…

IDEP Networks validator delegation explained

I’m just a humble farmer, and a total n00b when it comes to this. So I wrote this article to help my fellow n00bs out on to most easily get a validator node going on the testnet, and perhaps learn something new along the way.

So…let’s get started!

Build a VM on DigitalOcean

• Create account on digitalocean.com. I’m not walking you through those steps. You got this, good ser!
• Create → Droplets

• Under Choose an Image, select the Marketplace tab. Then search for Docker (if it doesn’t already show up on the Recommended list)

• Under Choose a Plan, this is really up to you. I went with the specs per the IDEP Validator documentation recommended hardware (okay, my storage is a bit light): Shared CPU — Basic, Regular Intel with SSD, 8GB / 4 CPU

• You don’t nee to add block storage
• Datacenter region doesn’t really matter. You might as well pick something close to you

• Select Add Monitoring, or not. It’s free. Doesn’t really matter, and you can add it later anyway
• Authentication: For the sake of this demo, I’m going to pick Password. But SSH keys are certainly more secure; those steps are pretty straightforward

• Select 1 Droplet (That’s how many VM’s you want to create)
• Choose a hostname, or don’t. It’s for your eyes only. And you can change it later anyway
• Add tags, or don’t. I’m not your mother
• If this is your first time using DigitalOcean, you’ll only have one Project, it will already be selected. You can change it later.
• Enable backups if you want. I’m cheap, and I like to live dangerously
• Click the big green Create Droplet button! Hooray!

• Voila!

Signing into Your Shiny New VM

• Click on your new Droplet, then click on Console

• I prefer to use PuTTY for ssh on my Windows machine

Building an IDEP Validator Node in a Docker Image on Your VM

When you built your node, you selected to have Docker already installed. So we just need to install the IDEP testnet Validator Docker image and execute it.

Install and Run the Node

Next steps are to [kinda] follow their github readme.md here, with couple differences.

In their “Step 1: Start Freeflow router (one instance per server)”, copy the completed example, but…

• Change <node> to be whatever you want to name the Docker image (no one will see it but you)
• Change <moniker> to be whatever you name want folks to see your validator node as. This is your chance to be creative! I have faith in you!

Example:

sudo docker run --name <node> -e moniker='<moniker>' -e chain='Test-Denali' -e api='95a7b71ab6ad8fad5f1ed3b49472683adea92cf1@142.93.65.220:26656,dc07da4be6ff285a1be2e9501fa92efef248d025@64.225.75.108:26656' -p 26656:26656 -p 26657:26657 -p 1317:1317 -itd idepnetwork/testnet-denali`

Example output:

Now for the next steps on the page…

• Step 2: Log into the Node container: sudo docker exec -it <node> bash
(you'll just get a new prompt...nothing exciting)
• Step 3: Check status iond status Example output:
  (If you want it formatter all pretty like, do a web search for a JSON formatter)

• Right now your node is playing catch up, which can take a few hours. Once you see "catching_up":false in your iond status, continue to next steps
  (this took about 5.5 hours on my setup)

The note at the bottom of the page says you have to change rpc address to tcp://127.0.0.1:26657 instead of the default tcp://0.0.0.0:26657 in the node’s settings. My ~/.ion/.config.toml file already had proxy_app = "tcp://127.0.0.1:26658"; so I don’t think I had to do make any changes

Create a Wallet Address on IDEP Network and Funding on Testnet

• Create your wallet address: iond keys add <accountname>
  <accountname> can be whatever you want
• Example

Now to put some precious IDEP into your wallet

• Navigate to https://faucet.idep.network/
• Enter your address (from the output above) and click submit (and probably a captcha).
• Faucet will deliver 100 yummy IDEP directly to your wallet!
• I’m not including screen shots. You got this!

Final Steps

• From the instructions on github, execute this:
  (yes, <your wallet> is your wallet address)
• you might want to use an amount less than what you got from the faucet to cover gas. Add 8 0’s to cover the decimal places, so 90 becomes 9000000000)

iond tx staking create-validator \
    --amount 9000000000idep \
    --commission-max-change-rate 0.01 \
    --commission-max-rate 0.2 \
    --commission-rate 0.1 \
    --from <your wallet> \
    --min-self-delegation 1 \
    --moniker NodeOne \
    --pubkey $(iond tendermint show-validator) \
    --chain-id Test-Denali

• You will see some pretty JSON returned, followed by the prompt
  confirm transaction before signing and broadcasting [y/N]:
Don't forget to enter 'y'. I left it sitting there forever before I noticed the prompt 😜

(If you run this before your your status shows "catching_up":false, you will see an error like this:Error: rpc error: code = NotFound desc = rpc error: code = NotFound desc = account <your wallet> not found: key not found)

That’s pretty much it! Enjoy your shiny new Validator node on IDEP Testnet!