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How To become an active witness in BitShares 2.0
This document serves as an introduction on how to become an actively block producing witness in in the BitShares2.0 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.
We will have to import an existing account from the BitShares 0.9 network and add some initial funds for the witness registration fee. After that, we will create, configure and run a witness node.
To create a new account, you will need to start with an existing account with
some of the BTS asset that will pay the transaction fee registering your new
witness. Get your <wif> key from BitShares 0.9 via
BitShares0.9: >>> wallet_dump_account_private_key <accountname> "owner_key"
"5....." # the <owner wif key>
The key we have extracted previously only gives access to the registered name. Hence, none of the accounts in the genesis block have balances in them. In the first BitShares network, accounts were less tightly coupled to balances. Balances were associated with public keys, and an account could have hundreds of public keys with balances (or, conversely, public keys with balances could exist without any account associated with them).
In order to get a witness registered we need to import approximately $120 worth of BTS into the BitShares 2.0 client later.
We can extract the required private keys that hold funds this way. First we get all balance ids from an account via:
BitShares0.9: >>> wallet_account_balance_ids <accountname>
[[
"xeroc",[
"BTSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA",
"BTSBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB",
...
]
]
]
Each of these balances can be investigated via:
BitShares0.9: >>> blockchain_get_balance BTSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
....
"asset_id": 0, <- asset_id (0: BTS)
"data": {
"owner": "BTSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWNER", <- address
...
"balance": 0, <- balance
...
The required part (the owner of the balance) is denoted as owner.
Pick one or more address for BTS balances and dump the corresponding private key(s) with:
BitShares0.9: >>> wallet_dump_private_key BTSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWNER
"5......." # the <balance wif key>
Note: Make sure to secure these private keys, as they are unencrypted and give access to the funds in the BitShares 0.9 network. You may loose your money if you are not an secure computer!
The following paragraphs will give an alternative (easier) way to dump the relevant private keys using a python script. If you are comfortable with the description above, you can safely skip the subsequent paragraph.
A Python script located at github may help you to retrieve private keys for your balances. You need to modify the first few lines of the script in order to get a connection to your BitShares daemon.
$ edit getbalancekeys.py
[...]
config.url = "http://10.0.0.16:19988/rpc"
config.user = 'rpc-user'
config.passwd = 'rpc-password'
config.wallet = "default"
[...]
If you don't know what to do with these, you certainly shouldn't run a witness just now. Instead, read about RPC and the API of BitShares. If you set up everything correctly, you may just run the python script and get the private keys associated to a given account name and the correspoinding balance:
$ python getbalancekeys.py
accountA 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<owner wif key> 2750.00000 BTS
accountB 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<owner wif key> 11246.00000 BTS
accountB 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<owner wif key> 30000.00000 BROWNIE.PTS
accountB 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<owner wif key> 300.00000 USE
accountB 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<owner wif key> 65744.00000 NOTE
accountC 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<owner wif key> 3.00000 GOLD
[...]
accountA's owner key 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<balance wif key> #
accountB's owner key 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<balance wif key> #
accountC's owner key 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<balance wif key> #
You will only need BTS balances and the one of your account owner keys in order to become a witness.
We now have everything prepared to
- import an existing account into the testnet
- redeem funds to register a witness in the testnet
and we will now continue with the following steps:
- create a wallet for the testnet
- import an account and funds
- upgrade our account to a lifetime member
- register a new witness
- upvote the witness with our funds
- sign blocks
From this point on, we will no longer require interaction with BitShares 0.9.
For the testnet we need to download the proper genesis block. Eventually, the genesis block will be part of the client so that this step will not be required for the real network later. The genesis block can be downloaded (here)[https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_GVo0GoC_v_S3lPOWlUbFJFWTQ].
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 104.200.28.117:61705 --rpc-endpoint 127.0.0.1:8090 --genesis-json aug-14-test-genesis.json
The address 104.200.28.117 is one of the public seed nodes.
We now open up the cli_wallet and connect to our plain and stupid 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 BitShares 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 BTS
Note: Make sure to put the []-brackets around the private key, since the import method takes an array of keys.
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 about $100
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": "GPH7vQ7GmRSJfDHxKdBmWMeDMFENpmHWKn99J457BNApiX1T5TNM8",
[...]
}
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
[[
...
],[
"GPH7vQ7GmRSJfDHxKdBmWMeDMFENpmHWKn99J457BNApiX1T5TNM8",
"5JGi7DM7J8fSTizZ4D9roNgd8dUc5pirUe9taxYCUUsnvQ4zCaQ"
]
]
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 --enable-stale-production --witness-id '"1.6.10"' --private-key '["GPH7vQ7GmRSJfDHxKdBmWMeDMFENpmHWKn99J457BNApiX1T5TNM8", "5JGi7DM7J8fSTizZ4D9roNgd8dUc5pirUe9taxYCUUsnvQ4zCaQ"]' --genesis-json aug-14-test-genesis.json -s 104.200.28.117:61705
Alternatively, you can also add this line into yout config.ini:
witness-id = "1.6.10"
private-key = ["GPH7vQ7GmRSJfDHxKdBmWMeDMFENpmHWKn99J457BNApiX1T5TNM8","5JGi7DM7J8fSTizZ4D9roNgd8dUc5pirUe9taxYCUUsnvQ4zCaQ"]
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