Tutorial on running voting and mining nodes on the QLC Chain

This is a step-by-step tutorial for both newbies and experienced users to get started with running the QLC Chain-based mining and voting nodes.

1. Create a QLC Chain account and a wallet address

QLC Chain upgraded explorer and wallet portal

https://explorer.qlcchain.org/

• Make sure your QLC wallet private keys and seeds are stored safely.

2. Activate your QLC Chain account

• Stake at least 1 QLC to activate your account

Please refer to the guide for QLC Chain wallet creation and QLC staking steps, before proceeding to running nodes, make sure you got an active QLC Chain account prepared with the account eligible for running a voting or mining node on the QLC Chain.

To run a mining node

• Stake at least 100K QLC to gain the eligibility of running a mining node

To run a voting node

• Possess at least 0.5% of the total voting power of the whole network which calculates to 3,000,000 QLC equivalent voting power

Understand more about the requirements of running QLC Chain-based nodes and the expected QGas return from https://medium.com/qlc-chain/qgas-distribution-mechanism-on-the-qlc-chain-26d8aa3a29a

• Each account can select its voting account at any time, you can also select your own account to be the voting account.

• Check if your account is in the REP list.

• To receive QGas incentives from running a voting node, your have to possess no less than 3M QLC equivalent voting Power.

3. Run a QLC Chain node

To mine QGas from the QLC Chain, you need to run the gqlc and mining program on a mining hardware that has an Internet connection.

This tutorial show how to deploy script for mining and voting nodes with Mac OS, Windows OS, and Linux OS.

3.1 Download the file for deploying the QLC Chain node from

• All-in-one package for newbies, download the file named 20191230 from

https://mega.nz/#F!tJ4HlK4T

Access code: TPB5fZmcutUXuYH4nBFP0Q

• For veterans:

https://github.com/qlcchain/go-qlc/releases/tag/v1.3.3

gqlc-miner:

https://github.com/qlcchain/qlc-miner/releases

gqlc-pool:

qlcchain/qlc-pool

3.2 To run a voting node

The recommended hardware for running a voting node can be one of the following:

• For newbies: a home computer which can be either a desktop or laptop with Windows, Mac or Linux OS installed.
• Recommended: A cloud virtual machine from any cloud service providers.

3.2.1 Mac OS

• Run gqlc to start the voting node, double click on gqlc.exe
• In the same Terminal window, below the output of the 1st step, type in the command lines as follows:

./gqlc — seed xxx — configParams=rpc.rpcEnabled=true

Notes: Fill in your QLC Chain wallet seed for ‘seed XXXX’

Run a QLC Chain-based voting node

3.2.2 Windows OS

• Download gqlc node from github: https://github.com/qlcchain/go-qlc/releases/tag/v1.3.3
• Open Command Prompt: Press “Win + R”, Input “cmd”
• Switch to the directory that contains the “gqlc.exe” : cd …
• Run gqlc.exe:

./gqlc — seed xxx — configParams=rpc.rpcEnabled=true

Notes: Fill in your QLC Chain testnet wallet seed for ‘seed XXXX’

3.2.3 Linux OS

There are two ways to run a voting node on linux OS:

1. Run the gqlc application directly in Windows OS

• Open up a terminal window
• Switch to the directory that contains the linux version of gqlc
• Run gqlc:

./gqlc — seed xxx — configParams=rpc.rpcEnabled=true

Notes: Fill in your QLC Chain testnet wallet seed for ‘seed XXXX’

2. Run the gqlc in docker

It’s recommended to run gqlc in docker in linux os in case of missing of library.

• Install docker in your linux:

https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/

• Download gqlc node from dockerhub:

docker pull qlcchain/go-qlc:v1.3.3

• Open up a terminal window, Run gqlc:

docker container run -d — name go-qlc — restart always -p 9734:9734 -p 9735:9735 -p 9736:9736 -v /opt/docker/go-qlc:/root/.gqlcchain qlcchain/go-qlc:v1.3.3 — configParams=rpc.rpcEnabled=true — seed=xxxx

Notes: Fill in your QLC Chain testnet wallet seed for ‘seed XXXX’

3.3 To run a mining node

Veteran miners can use CPU/GPU/ ASIC miner together with gqlc-pool, for support please refer to the technical document for multiple mining options via https://docs.qlcchain.online/tutorial/mining/pow.html#miner,

The recommended mining hardware can be one of the following:

A QLC Chain node on:

• For newbies: a home computer which can be either a desktop or laptop with Windows, Mac or Linux OS installed.
• Recommended: A cloud virtual machine from any cloud service providers.

And a pow mining hardware:

• For newbies: gqlc-miner which is a demon miner using CPU computing.
• Recommended: CPU/GPU/ ASIC miner together with gqlc-stratum.

Follow the steps to deploy the script:

• Run gqlc to start the node, double click on gqlc.exe
• Run the mining program

Launch Terminal, open up a new window

Navigate to the location of the gqlc-miner.exe file with the command line, tak

cd XXX\XX\XX 

• Under the directory of gqlc-miner exe, type in the command lines as follows:

./gqlc-miner -nodeurl http://127.0.0.1:9735 -algo SHA256D -miner qlc_XXXXX

Notes: Fill in your desired QLC Chain mining address for ‘qlc_XXXX’

3.4 To check on the latest ledger sync status, run the command line as follows:

./gqlc — endpoint http://127.0.0.1:19735

When it displays ‘>>’ , type in the command line:

pov getMiningInfo

The output then shows the Init Sync State, mining difficulty factor and current block height from which reads the syncing status.

3.5 Merged mining of BTC/LTC/DASH

Find the supporting documents from https://docs.qlcchain.online/tutorial/mining/auxpow.html#miner for details.

QLC Chain supports the mining algorithms of Sha256d and X11: The difficulty factors of the algorithms are unified to a common one for mining on the QLC Chain network. Whichever algorithm the miners use, they will compete on the computational power for the solution to generating the next block with the same incentivising rules applied.

QLC Chain adopts AuxPoW for the use of merged mining through which a miner can use their computational power to mine blocks on multiple chains concurrently.

3.6 Claim your entitled mining rewards from the QLC Chain explorer

Both mining nodes and voting nodes are entitled to claim their mining rewards directly by accessing the QLC Chain explorer.

Rewards for mining nodes

Login to your QLC Chain explorer account, click on the account icon, find ‘check my miners’ rewards’ under the ‘Mining’ section.

The miners’ rewards page displays your mining information including rewards and node status. Rewards can be redeemed by clicking on the ‘Get Reward’ button at the bottom of the screen,

Rewards for voting nodes

Login to your QLC Chain explorer account, click on the account icon, find ‘check my representative rewards’ under the ‘Representatives’ section.

This page displays the information of your voting node, rewards can be redeemed from tapping on ‘Get Reward’ from the bottom.

Find the The QGas rewards and mining incentives in details via

QGas Distribution Mechanism on the QLC Chain