How To become an active witness in Esher 2.0 - esherproject/esher-core GitHub Wiki

This document serves as an introduction on how to become an actively block producing witness in in the Esher 2.0 network. Please note that there currently is no public testnet available, hence, this howto will fail at the last few steps. However, we feel that we should inform interested parties about how to prepare their machines for participation as witness as soon as possible.

You will only need ESH balances and the one of your account owner keys in order to become a witness.

We first run the witness node without block production and connect it to the P2P network with the following command:

$ programs/witness_node/witness_node -s 149.28.145.13:61705 --rpc-endpoint 127.0.0.1:8090

The address 149.28.145.13 is one of the public seed nodes.

We now open up the cli_wallet and connect to witness node:

$ programs/cli_wallet/cli_wallet -s ws://127.0.0.1:8090

First thing to do is setting up a password for the newly created wallet prior to importing any private keys:

new >>> set_password <password>
null
locked >>> unlock <password>
null
unlocked >>>

Wallet creation is now done.

We can import the account name (owner key) and the balance containing keys into Esher 2.0:

unlocked >>> import_key <accountname> <owner wif key>
true
unlocked >>> import_balance <accountname> [<balance wif key>] true
[a transaction in json format]
unlocked >>> list_my_accounts
[{
"id": "1.2.15",
...
"name": <accountname>,
...
]
unlocked >>> list_account_balances <accountname>
XXXXXXX ESH

Note: Make sure to put the []-brackets around the private key, since the import method takes an array of keys.

In case your account's owner key is different from its active key, make sure you import it into Esher 2.0 as well.

Since only lifetime members can become witnesses, you must first upgrade to a lifetime member. This step costs the lifetime-upgrade fee which will eventually cost some ESH.

unlocked >>> upgrade_account <accountname> true
[a transaction in json format]

To become a witness and be able to produce blocks, you first need to create a witness object that can be voted in.

Note: If you want to experiment with things that require voting, be aware that votes are only tallied once per day at the maintenance interval. get_dynamic_global_properties tells us when that will be in next_maintenance_time. Once the next maintenance interval passes, run get_global_properties again and you should see that your new witness has been voted in.

Before we get started, we can see the current list of witnesses voted in, which will simply be the ten default witnesses:

unlocked >>> get_global_properties
...
  "active_witnesses": [
"1.6.0",
"1.6.1",
"1.6.2",
"1.6.3",
"1.6.4",
"1.6.5",
"1.6.6",
"1.6.7",
"1.6.8",
"1.6.9"
  ],
...

unlocked >>> create_witness <accountname> "url-to-proposal" true
{
  "ref_block_num": 139,
  "ref_block_prefix": 3692461913,
  "relative_expiration": 3,
  "operations": [[
  21,{
    "fee": {
      "amount": 0,
      "asset_id": "1.3.0"
    },
    "witness_account": "1.2.16",
    "url": "url-to-proposal",
    "block_signing_key": "PUBLIC KEY",
    "initial_secret": "00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"
  }
]
  ],
  "signatures": [
  "1f2ad5597af2ac4bf7a50f1eef2db49c9c0f7616718776624c2c09a2dd72a0c53a26e8c2bc928f783624c4632924330fc03f08345c8f40b9790efa2e4157184a37"
  ]
}

Our witness is registered, but it can't produce blocks because nobody has voted it in. You can see the current list of active witnesses with get_global_properties:

unlocked >>> get_global_properties
{
  "active_witnesses": [
"1.6.0",
"1.6.1",
"1.6.2",
"1.6.3",
"1.6.4",
"1.6.5",
"1.6.7",
"1.6.8",
"1.6.9"
  ],
  ...

Now, we should vote our witness in. Vote all of the shares in both <accountname> and nathan in favor of your new witness.

unlocked >>> vote_for_witness <accountname> <accountname> true true
[a transaction in json format]

Now we wait until the next maintenance interval.

Get the witness object using get_witness and take note of two things. The id is displayed in get_global_properties when the witness is voted in, and we will need it on the witness_node command line to produce blocks. We'll also need the public signing_key so we can look up the correspoinding private key.

Once we have that, run dump_private_keys which lists the public-key private-key pairs to find the private key.

Warning: dump_private_keys will display your keys unencrypted on the terminal, don't do this with someone looking over your shoulder.

unlocked >>> get_witness <accountname>
{
  [...]
  "id": "1.6.10",
  "signing_key": "ESHER7vQ7GmRSJfDHxKdBmWMeDMFENpmHWKn99J457BNApiXXXXXXXX",
  [...]
}

The id and the signing_key are the two important parameters, here. Let's get the private key for that signing key with:

unlocked >>> dump_private_keys
[[
  ...
  ],[
"ESHER7vQ7GmRSJfDHxKdBmWMeDMFENpmHWKn99J457BNApiXXXXXXXX",
"5JGi7DM7J8fSTizZ4D9roNgd8dUc5pirUe9taxYCUUsnXXXXXXX"
  ]
]

Now we need to start the witness, so shut down the wallet (ctrl-d), and shut down the witness (ctrl-c). Re-launch the witness, now mentioning the new witness 1.6.10 and its keypair:

./witness_node --rpc-endpoint=127.0.0.1:8090 --witness-id '"1.6.10"' --private-key '["ESHER7vQ7GmRSJfDHxKdBmWMeDMFENpmHWKn99J457BNApiXXXXXXXX", "5JGi7DM7J8fSTizZ4D9roNgd8dUc5pirUe9taxYCUUsnXXXXXXX"]' -s 149.28.145.13:21730

Alternatively, you can also add this line into yout config.ini:

witness-id = "1.6.10"
private-key = ["ESHER7vQ7GmRSJfDHxKdBmWMeDMFENpmHWKn99J457BNApiXXXXXXXX","5JGi7DM7J8fSTizZ4D9roNgd8dUc5pirUe9taxYCUUsnXXXXXXX"]

Note: Make sure to use YOUR public/private keys instead of the once given above!

If you monitor the output of the witness_node, you should see it generate blocks signed by your witness:

Witness 1.6.10 production slot has arrived; generating a block now...
Generated block #367 with timestamp 2015-07-05T20:46:30 at time 2015-07-05T20:46:30