Using Moneyd to Join the ILP Testnet

Moneyd is a daemon that lets programs on your computer use the Interledger network. You can think of it as your “home router” for the internet of value. If you’re new to Interledger, this is a good place to start.

Moneyd uses “uplinks” to connect to Interledger. So far, we’ve published moneyd-uplink-xrp, which uses payment channels on XRP to connect to peer with an Interledger connector. We’re working on modules for Ethereum and Lightning too, but they’re not yet ready to publish. Stay tuned for progress on them.

In this tutorial, I’ll describe how you can join the ILP testnet without having any previous experience with Interledger.

Install Moneyd

Before you start, you’ll need to set up Node.js on your machine.

• Install Node.js (version 8.9.4 or higher)
• Set up node to install modules globally

Once you’ve done that, you can install and configure moneyd from the command-line.

npm install -g moneyd moneyd-uplink-xrp
moneyd xrp:configure --testnet
moneyd xrp:start --testnet

Congratulations! You’re connected to the Interledger testnet!

Explanation

I’ll break down what just happened. When you run moneyd xrp:configure --testnet, Moneyd will:

• Query the XRP testnet for a new secret and address, which comes with 10,000 test XRP
• Pick a connector from the list of “bootstrap nodes” for the Interledger testnet. As of right now, the only public connector on the testnet is called “Amundsen.”
• Write a configuration file with these details to ~/.moneyd.test.json

When you run moneyd xrp:start --testnet:

• Moneyd loads ~/.moneyd.test.json and instantiates an ILP Connector.
• The connector opens a websocket connection to its peer, “Amundsen,” and creates an XRP payment channel.
• The connector listens on a local port to process ILP payments.