🔎Next steps

The first minutes and hours in your node's life

As soon as the witnet_node container is up, it will do the following things in order:

1. Try to open connections to other nodes in the network. It needs 8 "outbound" connections. This should take from several seconds to a few minutes.

2. Discover what is the tip of the block chain, and download all the blocks from that chain. This can take from several minutes to several hours. The synchronization time depends heavily on how long the block chain is, but also on your Internet bandwidth, CPU speed, memory size and speed, and storage drive write throughput.

3. Go into Synced status. In Synced status, your node will validate transactions and blocks in real time, and it will try itself to propose block candidates and participate in resolving data requests.

What to expect from your node's balance and mining power.

• Each nodes mining power is proportional to the amount of stake they have. You can calculate the expected APY using the staking dashboard. When staking, your validator node cannot sign for directly any staked balance, only the withdrawer can sign for those funds. Your node will not show a balance direclty, to see the current stake of your node or withdrawer you can call queryStakes.

• As with minting blocks, being assigned a request is proportional to your stake. Once you have mined one block or resolved at least one request, your nodes power will reset and begin to accumulate power over time.

Only native WIT can be staked. If you bought WIT ERC20 on Uniswap, you need you unwrap them first here: http://erc20.witnet.io/unwrap

How to stake WIT

To run validator node in Wit/Oracle network, you must stake WIT coins. This stake allows you to propose blocks and fulfill data requests. The minimum required stake is 10,000 WIT, while the maximum is 10,000,000 WIT for a single validator.

Generate an Authorization Code

Before staking, you must generate an authorization on the validator node itself.

Running this command will generate an authorization along with a QR code, consisting of the withdrawers address and the validators signature.

Docker

docke exec -it witnet_node witnet node authorizeStake --withdrawer <address>

Binary

Cargo

Options:

• --withdrawer: The address you will use to unstake and withdraw funds

⚠️ You will need the private key of this withdrawer address to sign any unstake transactions.

⚠️ Do not use an exchange address as the withdrawer address, since you won’t control its private key.

Submit the Stake Transaction

Once you have the authorization code, you can stake from any address that holds the WIT you want to stake. This can be done using the node CLI or a wallet such as myWitWallet.

Use the following command with required options:

Docker

docke exec -it witnet_node witnet node stake \
    --fee <fee (nanoWIT)> \
    --value <amount to stake (nanoWit)> \
    --withdrawer <withdrawer address> \
    --authorization <authorization code> \

Binary

Cargo

Options:

• --fee: The priority fee for your stake transaction (in nanoWit)

• --value: The amount to stake (in nanoWIT)

• --withdrawer: The address you will use to unstake and withdraw funds

• --authorization: Stake authorization code (the withdrawer address, signed by the validator node)

Confirm and Stake

After executing the command, you will be prompted to confirm the transaction details. Once confirmed, your stake transaction will be sent into the network. Once the transaction is mined, your validator will officially be ready to start validating!

Monitoring your node's progress

Here are some useful commands that you can use to keep track of how your node is performing in the network. A complete documentation of all the CLI methods is available in the node operator docs.

nodeStats

Among other information, this shows the synchronization state of your node, as well as counters for proposed and accepted blocks and participations in resolving data requests ("commitments").

Docker

docker exec witnet_node witnet node nodeStats

Binary

Cargo

queryStakes

The queryStakes command will print a list of every stake entry. The stakes tracker can also be filtered by specifying a validator or withdrawer address.

Options:

• -w, --withdrawer : The withdrawer address

• -v, --validator : The validator address

Docker

docker exec witnet_node witnet node queryStakes

Binary

Cargo

Check ports and incoming connections

To check if the listening port is correctly opened to the Internet, you can use a port forwarding testing tool or try to open a connection to your public IP from a device that is not in the same network as your node:

Telnet

# If you get stuck when running this command, it is indeed a good sign that
# the connection was stablished. To exist a Telnet session, press "Ctrl + ]",
# then write "quit" and press Enter.
telnet your_public_ip 21337

GNU NetCat

The final check to verify that your port is correctly forwarded is using the peers method to look if any of the peer connections is tagged as inbound:

Docker

docker exec witnet_node witnet node peers

Binary

Cargo

Multiple Witnet nodes can run in the same device or network and still get incoming connections. This is possible by forwarding a different external port (e.g. 22337) to the port of your second node.

However, your second node may require setting an additional parameter in its configuration file so that it is aware of the new port. Please read below how to customize the configuration file. The parameter you need to adjust is public_addr.

Back up your private master key

Doing a backup of the private master key of your node is a great way to keep your Wit coins safe.

Export

This command will print your master key into your console terminal:

Docker

docker exec witnet_node witnet node masterKeyExport

Binary

Cargo

You can also add the --write flag to write a backup of your master key into a file in the configuration directory of your node (~/.witnet/config by default):

Docker

docker exec witnet_node witnet node masterKeyExport --write

Binary

Cargo

It is recommended to move or copy the resulting file into a safe place. Writing it into a piece of paper and keeping it somewhere safe from light, water, fire (and eyes 👀) is the best option.

Please keep the exported key totally secret. Anyone with knowledge of this key has full access to all your Wit coins.

Import

Importing master keys is only allowed when creating a new node, as overwriting a existing key could be dangerous. The process is quite simple:

Docker + nano

mkdir -p ~/.witnet/config

nano ~/.witnet/config/master.key 

chmod 777 ~/.witnet/config

# Now enter your master key into the file editor, 
# save with Ctrl+O and exit with Ctrl+X
docker run -d \
    --name witnet_node \
    --volume ~/.witnet:/.witnet \
    --publish 21337:21337 \
    --restart always \
    witnet/witnet-rust \
    node server --master-key-import /.witnet/config/master.key

Docker + vim

Binary

Never use the same master key on multiple nodes at once. You may find your nodes exposed to double-spend issues and severe slashing.

Customize the configuration if needed

A custom witnet.toml configuration file can be used to adjust some parameters of the node. The default configuration file itself contains detailed explanations for each parameter.

If you created your node following this guide, your witnet.toml file will be found in the ~/.witnet/config folder, right in your user's directory.

You can easily edit the configuration file like this:

Vim (Mac OS and GNU/Linux)

vim ~/.witnet/config/witnet.toml

Nano (GNU/Linux)

Upgrade your Witnet node

Upgrading is as easy as it gets:

1. Remove the old container

docker stop witnet_node
docker rm witnet_node

2. Pull the latest version of the Docker image

docker pull witnet/witnet-rust

3. Recreate the container using the latest Docker image

MacOS and Linux

docker run -d \    
    --name witnet_node \    
    --volume ~/.witnet:/.witnet \    
    --publish 21337:21337 \    
    --restart always \    
    witnet/witnet-rust

Windows

Raspberry Pi

If you changed the persistent storage path in the past, change ~/.witnet for whatever path you were using.

Voilà! Your Witnet node is now upgraded. Your master key is safe and your addresses will be the same. Remember that you can always double-check the Witnet version that you are running with this command:

docker exec witnet_node witnet --version

Long term maintenance of your node

There are some operations that are recommended from time to time to make sure your node is in perfect order:

• Give a look to the result of the nodeStats, queryStakes and queryPowers commands.

• Check that you are getting incoming connections as explained above.

• Keep an eye on announcements for software and networks upgrades through the Witnet Community Discord and Telegram to make sure that you are running the latest release, which should give your node the best performance, liveness and security.

• Restart your node once in a while (e.g. docker restart witnet_node) so that the node can perform some housekeeping operations. This helps reducing memory footprint and optimize disk space.