Nomic Bitcoin Bridge
This testnet version is the release candidate for the upcoming Stakenet upgrade.
If you're upgrading your existing testnet node:
- Rebuild from this branch with:
git pull
cargo install --locked --path .
-
Shut down your running node.
-
Restart your node with
nomic start
.
Your node will automatically perform the upgrade on Friday, October 7 at 17:00 UTC.
This guide will walk you through setting up a node for the Nomic testnet.
If you need any help getting your node running, join the Discord and ask for the Validator role.
- >= 4GB RAM
- >= 100GB of storage
- Linux or macOS (Windows support coming soon)
Start by building Nomic - for now this requires Rust nightly. Install rustup if you haven't already:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
Install nightly as well (nomic currently requires rust nightly):
rustup default nightly
Install required dependencies (ubuntu):
sudo apt install build-essential libssl-dev pkg-config clang
For systems running fedora:
sudo dnf install clang openssl-devel && sudo dnf group install "C Development Tools and Libraries"
Clone the github folder and switch to the correct folder:
git clone https://github.com/nomic-io/nomic.git && cd nomic
git checkout testnet
Build and install, adding a nomic
command to your PATH:
cargo install --locked --path .
Start your Nomic node:
nomic start
This will run the Nomic state machine and a Tendermint process. For new nodes the statesync process will run automatically to get the node up to speed with the current chain.
First, find your address by running nomic balance
(for now this must be run on
the same machine as your active full node).
Ask the Nomic team for some coins in the Discord and include your address.
Once you have received coins, you can declare your node as a validator and delegate to yourself with:
nomic declare \
<validator_consensus_key> \
<amount> \
<commission_rate> \
<max_commission_rate> \
<max_commission_rate_change_per_day> \
<min_self_delegation> \
<moniker> \
<website> \
<identity> \
<details>
IMPORTANT NOTE: Carefully double-check all the fields since you will not be
able to modify the commission_max
or commission_max_change
after declaring. If you make a mistake, you will have to
declare a new validator instead.
- The
validator_consensus_key
field is the base64 pubkeyvalue
field found under"validator_info"
in the output of http://localhost:26657/status. - The
identity
field is the 64-bit hex key suffix found on your Keybase profile, used to get your profile picture in wallets and block explorers.
For example:
nomic declare \
ohFOw5u9LGq1ZRMTYZD1Y/WrFtg7xfyBaEB4lSgfeC8= \
100000 \
0.042 \
0.1 \
0.01 \
100000 \
"Foo's Validator" \
"https://foovalidator.com" \
37AA68F6AA20B7A8 \
"Please delegate to me!"
The funds in the Bitcoin bridge are held in a large multisig controlled by the Nomic validators. If you are a validator with a significant amount of voting power, it is very important that you run a signer.
This will submit your public key to the network so you can be added to the multisig. If you do not have a key stored at ~/.nomic-testnet-4c/signer/xpriv
, this will automatically generate a Bitcoin extended private key for you. KEEP THIS KEY SAFE - similar to your validator private key, it is important to be mindful of this key so that it is never lost or stolen.
Note: Setting your signatory key is only required if you are starting a fresh node. Migrating nodes can move on to the next step.
nomic set-signatory-key
If you have your extended private key stored in a different location than the default, you may pass a path.
nomic set-signatory-key <path-to-your-key>
You can run the signer with:
nomic signer
If you have stored your xpriv in a different location, you can pass the path to the signer.
nomic signer xpriv_paths=[<path_to_your_xpriv>]
Leave this process running, it will automatically sign Bitcoin transactions that the network wants to create.
In the future, we hope for the community to come up with alternative types of signers which provide for extra security, by e.g. airgapping keys, using HSMs, or prompting the user for an encryption key.
Relayer nodes carry data between the Bitcoin blockchain and the Nomic blockchain. You can help support the health of the network by running a Bitcoin node alongside your Nomic node and running the relayer process.
Download Bitcoin Core: https://bitcoin.org/en/download
Run it with:
bitcoind -server -testnet -rpcuser=satoshi -rpcpassword=nakamoto
(The RPC server only listens on localhost, so the user and password are not critically important.)
NOTE: To save on disk space, you may want to configure your Bitcoin node to prune block storage. For instance, add -prune=5000
to only keep a maximum of 5000 MB of blocks. You may also want to use the -daemon
option to keep the node running in the background.
nomic relayer --rpc-port=18332 --rpc-user=satoshi --rpc-pass=nakamoto
Leave this running - the relayer will constantly scan the Bitcoin and Nomic chains and broadcast relevant data.
The relayer will also create a server which listens on port 8999 for clients to announce their deposit addresses. To help make the network more reliable, if you run a relayer please open this port and let us know your node's address in Discord or a Github issue so we can have clients make use of your node. If you're going to make this service public, putting the server behind an HTTP reverse proxy is recommended for extra safety.
Thanks for participating in the Nomic Testnet! We'll be updating the network often so stay tuned in Discord for updates.