Setting up a Gnosis Validator:

Setup ssh key:

Created a new public/private key pair to interact with the console of the droplet.

Create a droplet

Create a droplet with the following values.

• 4 vCPUs

• 32GB / 600GB Disk

• ($262/mo)

Setup firewall

Set up the firewall ports for Nethermind, Prysm & Lighthouse.

sudo ufw allow 30303

sudo ufw deny 8545

sudo ufw allow 12000/udp

sudo ufw allow 13000/tcp

sudo ufw enable

Note: Faced an issue connecting to the droplet after making this change. Had to enable port 22 to get it working.

Install docker-compose:

Using the terminal, run the commands given to install docker-compose.

sudo apt-get remove docker-compose sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.2.3/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/docker-compose /usr/bin/docker-compose

Generate Validator Keystores and Deposit Data

Pull the docker image for the validator data generator.

cd docker pull ghcr.io/gnosischain/validator-data-generator:latest

This will be used to generate key stores and deposit data.

Generating validator keys and deposit data

Run the below command in the terminal

docker run -it --rm -v /root/snap/validator_keys:/app/validator_keys ghcr.io/gnosischain/validator-data-generator:latest new-mnemonic --num_validators=1 --mnemonic_language=english --folder=/app/validator_keys

Take down the mnemonic seed phrase and follow the steps in the terminal.

Choose Your Beacon Chain Client & Import Validator Keys

I chose the lighthouse client.

Installing the lighthouse client

Download the lighthouse-v{version}-x86_64-apple-darwin-portable.tar.gz binary from the releases page.

wget https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/releases/download/v3.2.1/lighthouse-v3.2.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-portable.tar.gz

Extract the archive.

tar -xvf lighthouse-v3.2.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-portable.tar.gz 

Move the lighthouse binary to a location in the path.

Obtain the lighthouse docker image

Run the following command to obtain the latest lighthouse docker image

docker pull sigp/lighthouse

Download and test the image with

docker run sigp/lighthouse lighthouse --version

Build from Source

• Install Rust using [rustup]. Once done, run the below command to add cargo command to the path. source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

• Install the following packages

  sudo apt install -y git gcc g++ make cmake pkg-config llvm-dev libclang-dev clang protobuf-compiler
  

Build Lighthouse

Clone the lighthouse repository

git clone https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse.git

cd lighthouse
git checkout stable
make

While running the make command I ran into an error.

error: could not compile http_api due to previous error

The solution to this was to add a recursion limit to the crate http_api

#![recursion_limit = "256"]

After adding this the make command was successful.

Start the processes

To start the consensus layer, run the below command inside the validator-keys folder

lighthouse bn --http

To start the execution layer, run the below command

docker run -p 9000:9000/tcp -p 9000:9000/udp -p 127.0.0.1:5052:5052 -v $HOME/.lighthouse:/root/.lighthouse sigp/lighthouse lighthouse --network mainnet beacon --http --http-address 0.0.0.0

Connecting to an external execution layer

Create a random jwt token as this will be used to connect to an external node
openssl rand -hex 32 | tr -d "\n" > "/tmp/jwtsecret"

Once created, start the consensus layer by passing the execution layer address and the created jet

lighthouse bn --http ----execution-endpoint https://gnosischain-rpc.gateway.pokt.network --execution-jwt /tmp/jwtsecret