insight-chain / Inb Go

JSON RPC server

INB GO

Official golang implementation of the Insight Chain

Building

First, you need both a Go (version 1.10 or later) and a C compiler.

make ginb

or, to build the full suite of utilities:

make all

Running

Going through all the possible command line flags is out of scope here , but we've enumerated a few common parameter combos to get you up to speed quickly on how you can run your own ginb instance.

Full node on the main INB network

By far the most common scenario is people wanting to simply interact with the INB network: create accounts; transfer funds; Mortgage or release; deploy and interact with contracts. For this particular use-case the user doesn't care about years-old historical data, so we can fast-sync quickly to the current state of the network. To do so:

$ ginb console

Full supernode on the main INB network

If you want to be a supernode and have the right to mine, you have to get someone else's vote in advance and only the 21 nodes with the highest number of votes have the chance.

If you meet the above conditions, please continue.

You need to make your nodeid before you start the network.

$ ginb nodekey [datadir]

The returned nodeid (as enodes.id) needs to be configured in the genesis.json file, as well as your ip, port, name, country and so on. Data provide some other K-V information if you want to store

{
  "config": {
    "chainId": 891,
    "homesteadBlock": 0,
    "eip155Block": 0,
    "eip158Block": 0,
    "byzantiumBlock": 0,
    "vdpos": {
      "period": 3,
      "signerPeriod": 3,
      "signerBlocks": 6,
      "epoch": 201600,
      "maxSignersCount": 21, 
      "minVoterBalance": 1000000000000000000,
      "genesisTimestamp": 1561544470,
      "signers": [
        "0x891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313",
        "0x4643ce2d6d4fe02e2b57070806364dde9eb8cac9",
        "0x230cf5081833c4f16e69e102ea00a4583a33cb11"
      ],
  "enodes":[
            {"address":"0x891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313",
            "id":"327d1a41974ad0a672d9b3dcfada5a934b4c21207e95a40d534bde44c2f7b39c4f10dda7a7bc060c00868a77b522878ab960dff2f23f463616736a1e6e39ea93",
            "ip":"192.168.1.181",
            "port":"30001",
            "name":"inb",
            "nation":"China",
            "city":"beijing",
            "image":"www.image.com",
            "website":"www.insightchain.io",
            "email":"[email protected]",
            "data":"{\"hobby\":\"money\",\"age\":\"21\"}"},

            {"address":"0x891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313",
            "id":"327d1a41974ad0a672d9b3dcfada5a934b4c21207e95a40d534bde44c2f7b39c4f10dda7a7bc060c00868a77b522878ab960dff2f23f463616736a1e6e39ea93",
            "ip":"192.168.1.181",
            "port":"30001",
            "name":"inb",
            "nation":"China",
            "city":"beijing",
            "image":"www.image.com",
            "website":"www.insightchain.io",
            "email":"[email protected]",
            "data":"{\"hobby\":\"money\",\"age\":\"21\"}"},

            {"address":"0x891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313",
            "id":"327d1a41974ad0a672d9b3dcfada5a934b4c21207e95a40d534bde44c2f7b39c4f10dda7a7bc060c00868a77b522878ab960dff2f23f463616736a1e6e39ea93",
            "ip":"192.168.1.181",
            "port":"30001",
            "name":"inb",
            "nation":"China",
            "city":"beijing",
            "image":"www.image.com",
            "website":"www.insightchain.io",
            "email":"[email protected]",
            "data":"{\"hobby\":\"money\",\"age\":\"21\"}"},
]
}
  },
  "coinbase": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "difficulty": "0x1",
  "extraData": "0x00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "gasLimit": "0x2fefd8",
  "nonce": "0x0",
  "mixHash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "parentHash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "timestamp": "0x00",
  "alloc": {
    "891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313": {
      "balance": "0"
    },
    "4643ce2d6d4fe02e2b57070806364dde9eb8cac9": {
      "balance": "0"
    },
    "230cf5081833c4f16e69e102ea00a4583a33cb11": {
      "balance": "0"
    }
  }
}

Vdpos is necessary. Period represents the number of seconds between blocks, signerPeriod represents the number of seconds blocks between two super nodes, signerBlocks represents the number of packaged blocks per super node, epoch represents the interval between emptying voting information and re-voting, and maxSignersCount represents the maximum number of super nodes. Enodes represents information about all super nodes that were first voted for and everyone automatically connects to the supernodes' networks.

Tip:Then everyone initializes the Genesis Block with the same set of genesis.json files

$ ginb init path/to/genesis.json

Finally start the network

$ ginb --datadir data1/ --networkid 891 --nodiscover --rpcport 6002 --port 30002 console

Full node on the INB test network

Transitioning towards developers, if you'd like to play around with creating INB contracts, you almost certainly would like to do that without any real money involved until you get the hang of the entire system. In other words, instead of attaching to the main network, you want to join the test network with your node, which is fully equivalent to the main network, but with play-inber only.

$ ginb --testnet console

The console subcommand has the exact same meaning as above and they are equally useful on the testnet too. Please see above for their explanations if you've skipped here.

Specifying the --testnet flag, however, will reconfigure your ginb instance a bit:

• Instead of using the default data directory (~/.inb on Linux for example), ginb will nest itself one level deeper into a testnet subfolder (~/.inb/testnet on Linux). Note, on OSX and Linux this also means that attaching to a running testnet node requires the use of a custom endpoint since ginb attach will try to attach to a production node endpoint by default. E.g. ginb attach <datadir>/testnet/ginb.ipc. Windows users are not affected by this.
• Instead of connecting the main INB network, the client will connect to the test network, which uses different P2P bootnodes, different network IDs and genesis states.

Note: Although there are some internal protective measures to prevent transactions from crossing over between the main network and test network, you should make sure to always use separate accounts for play-money and real-money. Unless you manually move accounts, ginb will by default correctly separate the two networks and will not make any accounts available between them.

### Configuration

As an alternative to passing the numerous flags to the `ginb` binary, you can also pass a
configuration file via:

```shell
$ geinb --config /path/to/your_config.toml

To get an idea how the file should look like you can use the dumpconfig subcommand to export your existing configuration:

$ ginb --your-favourite-flags dumpconfig

Programmatically interfacing ginb nodes

As a developer, sooner rather than later you'll want to start interacting with ginb and the Insight network via your own programs and not manually through the console. To aid this, ginb has built-in support for a JSON-RPC based APIs and [ginb specific APIs] These can be exposed via HTTP, WebSockets and IPC (UNIX sockets on UNIX based platforms, and named pipes on Windows).

The IPC interface is enabled by default and exposes all the APIs supported by ginb, whereas the HTTP and WS interfaces need to manually be enabled and only expose a subset of APIs due to security reasons. These can be turned on/off and configured as you'd expect.

HTTP based JSON-RPC API options:

• --rpc Enable the HTTP-RPC server
• --rpcaddr HTTP-RPC server listening interface (default: localhost)
• --rpcport HTTP-RPC server listening port (default: 8545)
• --rpcapi API's offered over the HTTP-RPC interface (default: inb,net,web3)
• --rpccorsdomain Comma separated list of domains from which to accept cross origin requests (browser enforced)
• --ws Enable the WS-RPC server
• --wsaddr WS-RPC server listening interface (default: localhost)
• --wsport WS-RPC server listening port (default: 8546)
• --wsapi API's offered over the WS-RPC interface (default: inb,net,web3)
• --wsorigins Origins from which to accept websockets requests
• --ipcdisable Disable the IPC-RPC server
• --ipcapi API's offered over the IPC-RPC interface (default: admin,debug,inb.vdpos,miner,net,personal,shh,txpool,web3)
• --ipcpath Filename for IPC socket/pipe within the datadir (explicit paths escape it)

You'll need to use your own programming environments' capabilities (libraries, tools, etc) to connect via HTTP, WS or IPC to a ginb node configured with the above flags and you'll need to speak JSON-RPC on all transports. You can reuse the same connection for multiple requests!

Note: Please understand the security implications of opening up an HTTP/WS based transport before doing so! Hackers on the internet are actively trying to subvert Insight nodes with exposed APIs! Further, all browser tabs can access locally running web servers, so malicious web pages could try to subvert locally available APIs!

Operating a private network

Maintaining your own private network is more involved as a lot of configurations taken for granted in the official networks need to be manually set up.

Defining the private genesis state

First, you'll need to create the genesis state of your networks, which all nodes need to be aware of and agree upon. This consists of a small JSON file (e.g. call it genesis.json):

{
  "config": {
    "chainId": 891,
    "homesteadBlock": 0,
    "eip155Block": 0,
    "eip158Block": 0,
    "byzantiumBlock": 0,
    "vdpos": {
      "period": 3,
      "signerPeriod": 3,
      "signerBlocks": 6,
      "epoch": 201600,
      "maxSignersCount": 21, 
      "minVoterBalance": 1000000000000000000,
      "genesisTimestamp": 1561544470,
      "signers": [
        "0x891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313",
        "0x4643ce2d6d4fe02e2b57070806364dde9eb8cac9",
        "0x230cf5081833c4f16e69e102ea00a4583a33cb11"
      ],
  "enodes":[
            {"address":"0x891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313",
            "id":"327d1a41974ad0a672d9b3dcfada5a934b4c21207e95a40d534bde44c2f7b39c4f10dda7a7bc060c00868a77b522878ab960dff2f23f463616736a1e6e39ea93",
            "ip":"192.168.1.181",
            "port":"30001",
            "name":"inb",
            "nation":"China",
            "city":"beijing",
            "image":"www.image.com",
            "website":"www.insightchain.io",
            "email":"[email protected]",
            "data":"{\"hobby\":\"money\",\"age\":\"21\"}"},

            {"address":"0x891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313",
            "id":"327d1a41974ad0a672d9b3dcfada5a934b4c21207e95a40d534bde44c2f7b39c4f10dda7a7bc060c00868a77b522878ab960dff2f23f463616736a1e6e39ea93",
            "ip":"192.168.1.181",
            "port":"30001",
            "name":"inb",
            "nation":"China",
            "city":"beijing",
            "image":"www.image.com",
            "website":"www.insightchain.io",
            "email":"[email protected]",
            "data":"{\"hobby\":\"money\",\"age\":\"21\"}"},

            {"address":"0x891b2388ce73356917b21ca54f3039cbdfc29313",
            "id":"327d1a41974ad0a672d9b3dcfada5a934b4c21207e95a40d534bde44c2f7b39c4f10dda7a7bc060c00868a77b522878ab960dff2f23f463616736a1e6e39ea93",
            "ip":"192.168.1.181",
            "port":"30001",
            "name":"inb",
            "nation":"China",
            "city":"beijing",
            "image":"www.image.com",
            "website":"www.insightchain.io",
            "email":"[email protected]",
            "data":"{\"hobby\":\"money\",\"age\":\"21\"}"},
]
}

The above fields should be fine for most purposes, although we'd recommend changing the nonce to some random value so you prevent unknown remote nodes from being able to connect to you. If you'd like to pre-fund some accounts for easier testing, you can populate the alloc field with account configs:

"alloc": {
  "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000001": {
    "balance": "111111111"
  },
  "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000002": {
    "balance": "222222222"
  }
}

With the genesis state defined in the above JSON file, you'll need to initialize every ginb node with it prior to starting it up to ensure all blockchain parameters are correctly set:

$ ginb init path/to/genesis.json

Creating the rendezvous point

With all nodes that you want to run initialized to the desired genesis state, you'll need to start a bootstrap node that others can use to find each other in your network and/or over the internet. The clean way is to configure and run a dedicated bootnode:

$ bootnode --genkey=boot.key
$ bootnode --nodekey=boot.key

Note: You could also use a full-fledged ginb node as a bootnode, but it's the less recommended way.

Starting up your member nodes

With the bootnode operational and externally reachable (you can try telnet <ip> <port> to ensure it's indeed reachable), start every subsequent ginb node pointed to the bootnode for peer discovery via the --bootnodes flag. It will probably also be desirable to keep the data directory of your private network separated, so do also specify a custom --datadir flag.

$ ginb --datadir=path/to/custom/data/folder --bootnodes=<bootnode-enode-url-from-above>

Note: Since your network will be completely cut off from the main and test networks, you'll also need to configure a miner to process transactions and create new blocks for you.

Running a private miner

Mining on the public Insight network is a complex task as it's only feasible using GPUs, requiring an OpenCL or CUDA enabled inbminer instance. For information on such a setup

In a private network setting, however a single CPU miner instance is more than enough for practical purposes as it can produce a stable stream of blocks at the correct intervals without needing heavy resources (consider running on a single thread, no need for multiple ones either). To start a ginb instance for mining, run it with all your usual flags, extended by:

$ ginb <usual-flags> --mine --minerthreads=1 --inberbase=0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000