Deploying parastate testnet node. Tutorial

Hi there!

Today we will deploy Parastate testnet node.

There is official guide here https://github.com/ParaState/frontier/wiki/ParaState-Testnet-Node-Setup-Guideline

But we will go through the most difficult and tricky stages.

1. First of all you have to decide where to rent server. In the offcial guide they suggest you Microsoft Azure D2s_v3. As for me I have chosen Digital ocean. There you can rent 2CPU, 8 GB Memory / 160 GB Disk + 500 GB disk for 90 USD per month.
2. Next you should setup parastate node. As you can see from official guide there are 2 options: docker or manual installation. I chose manual in order to control all stages. In this case you can use offcicial guide, all stages are very detailed and will not raise any problems.
3. Expose ports.

30333: Default p2p traffic port. Make sure you expose this port externally.

9933: Default RPC traffic port.

9944: Default WebSocket traffic port.

I used ufw for that purpose:

$sudo ufw enable

$sudo ufw allow 30333

$sudo ufw allow 9933

$sudo ufw allow 9944

And check wether it worked:
$sudo ufw status verbose

4. Generate Your Own Keys.

# Install subkey tool
curl https://getsubstrate.io -sSf | bash -s -- --fast
cargo install --force subkey --git https://github.com/paritytech/substrate --version 2.0.0 --locked

# Generate a mnemonic and see the sr25519 key and address
subkey generate --scheme sr25519

# Use the same mnemonic to see ed25519 key and address
subkey inspect --scheme ed25519 "<Your Mnemonic>"

My advice that you should save all your PubKeys and mnemonic. You will need it later.

5. Run your node:
git clone https://github.com/ParaState/frontier.git
cd frontier
cargo run — release — bin frontier-template-node — \
— execution=Native \
— base-path ./data \
— chain ./specs/2021–04–22-spec-raw.json \
— port 30333 \
— rpc-port 9933 \
— ws-port 9944 \
— validator \
— telemetry-url ‘wss://telemetry.polkadot.io/submit/ 0’ \
— name ‘<Your Node Name>’ \
— bootnodes /ip4/13.67.57.72/tcp/30333/p2p/12D3KooWNwpkJk3f4fUEc9cjSzLC5xE3opf25pjt7izfNGc1v5Tu

After node started give it some time for catching up for the latest block.

And the last part to become a validor is Add Your Key to Your ParaState Node. There is a very detailed guide here how to complete this task:

Connecting a local node to polkadot.js

But when adding key to the keystore be careful and pay attention to this recommendation from official guide:
“Here you need to restart your node with --rpc-methods Unsafe temporary. You should restart your node without this flag after adding keys.”

Thank for reading. Happy codding!

Links

Website — https://www.parastate.io
Twitter — https://twitter.com/parastate
Github — https://github.com/ParaState/
Telegram — https://t.me/parastateofficial
Discord — https://discord.gg/DgKNeJFBXA
Medium — https://medium.com/ethereum-on-steroids