Full Node Setup

This document describes how to set up a full Encointer node. A full node is a node that validates the entire blockchain history. Interacting with a full node you run yourself is the most secure and most privacy-preserving way to interact with the Encointer network.

Requirements

HW Requirements

Full nodes can be run on very affordable HW. The minimum requirements are

1TB NVMe SSD.
- seq. write performance should be > 1000 MB/s. Consider that SSD's get slower the more full they get. Also, they wear out with intense usage)
16GB RAM (8GB currently works, but is not recommended)
CPU won't matter much, but go for maximum single-core performance rather than many cores.

OS Requirements

In the following, we'll assume you're using ubuntu 22.04

Internet Connection Requirements

If you run your node in a datacenter, you can skip this section. If you run consumer HW and "fair-use" internet connections like cellular, this is for you:

The initial sync of the chain will cause significant data volume of several 100 GB. If you run on a metered internet connection you may want to check your tariffs.

Once your chain is synced you should expect a constant data bandwidth in the order of 0.2-1.0 MB/s up and down. If you need to throttle that you may want to look into restricting the number of peers --in-peers, --in-peers-light, --out-peers .

You should also check your networking latency with ping telemetry.polkadot.io. The result depends on your geographical location, obviously. If your ping time exceeds 500ms you may have networking issues. If you want to run a collator, latency is critical.

Install Dependencies

The recommended way to setup a full node is to start with the ansible setup provided by w3f.

Should you wish to do it manually, we'll redirect you to the polkadot docs

Systemd Service

We assume you'd like to use your node for rpc queries from outside and monitor it with prometheus

The settings are optimized to minimize resource consumption

[Unit]
Description=Encointer Kusama Collator

[Service]
User=encointer
Group=collators

ExecStart=/home/encointer/encointer-kusama/encointer-collator \
  --chain=encointer-kusama \
  --base-path <your large volume> \
  --sync=warp \
  --database paritydb \
  --state-pruning 100 \
  --blocks-pruning 100 \
  --name <a name that will appear in telemetry>> \
  --telemetry-url 'wss://telemetry.polkadot.io/submit 1' \
  --prometheus-external \
  --rpc-cors all \
  --rpc-methods=Unsafe \
  --enable-offchain-indexing true \
    -- \
  --chain kusama \
  --base-path <your large volume> \
  --sync=warp \
  --database paritydb \
  --state-pruning 100 \
  --blocks-pruning 100 \
  --prometheus-external \

Restart=always
RestartSec=60

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The Encointer Book