Join a Testnet

This document outlines the steps to join an existing testnet

Pick a Testnet

You specify the network you want to join by setting the genesis file and seeds. If you need more information about past networks, check our networks repo.

Testnet Chain ID	Description	Site	Status
point_10731-1	Uranus Testnet	Uranus	Live

Install pointd

Follow the installation document to install the Point Chain binary pointd.

danger

Make sure you have the right version of pointd installed.

Save Chain ID

We recommend saving the testnet chain-id into your pointd's client.toml. This will make it so you do not have to manually pass in the chain-id flag for every CLI command.

tip

See the Official Chain IDs for reference.

pointd config chain-id point_10731-1

Initialize Node

We need to initialize the node to create all the necessary validator and node configuration files:

pointd init <your_custom_moniker> --chain-id point_10731-1

danger

Monikers can contain only ASCII characters. Using Unicode characters will render your node unreachable.

By default, the init command creates your ~/.pointd (i.e $HOME) directory with subfolders config/ and data/. In the config directory, the most important files for configuration are app.toml and config.toml.

Genesis & Seeds

Copy the Genesis File

Check the genesis.json file from the archive and copy it over to the config directory: ~/.pointd/config/genesis.json. This is a genesis file with the chain-id and genesis accounts balances.

sudo apt install -y unzip wget
wget  -O ~/.pointd/config/genesis.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pointnetwork/point-chain-config/main/testnet-xNet-Uranus-1/genesis.json

Then verify the correctness of the genesis configuration file:

pointd validate-genesis

Add Seed Nodes

Your node needs to know how to find peers. You'll need to add healthy seed nodes to $HOME/.pointd/config/config.toml. The point-chaing-config repo contains links to some seed nodes.

Edit the file located in ~/.pointd/config/config.toml and the seeds to the following:

#######################################################
###           P2P Configuration Options             ###
#######################################################
[p2p]

# ...

# Comma separated list of seed nodes to connect to
seeds = "<node-id>@<ip>:<p2p port>"

You can use the following code to get seeds from the repo and add it to your config:

SEEDS=`curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pointnetwork/point-chain-config/main/testnet-xNet-Uranus-1/seeds.txt | awk '{print $1}' | paste -s -d, -`
sed -i.bak -e "s/^seeds =.*/seeds = \"$SEEDS\"/" ~/.pointd/config/config.toml

tip

For more information on seeds and peers, you can the Tendermint P2P documentation.

Add Persistent Peers

We can set the persistent_peers field in ~/.pointd/config/config.toml to specify peers that your node will maintain persistent connections with.

A list of available persistent peers is also available in the #find-peers channel in the Point Chain Discord. You can get a random 10 entries from the peers.txt file in the PEERS variable by running the following command:

PEERS=`curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pointnetwork/point-chain-config/main/testnet-xNet-Uranus-1/peers.txt | sort -R | head -n 10 | awk '{print $1}' | paste -s -d, -`

Use sed to include them into the configuration. You can also add them manually:

sed -i.bak -e "s/^persistent_peers *=.*/persistent_peers = \"$PEERS\"/" ~/.pointd/config/config.toml

Run a Testnet Validator

tip

For more details on how to run your validator, follow these instructions.

pointd tx staking create-validator \
  --amount=1000000000000apoint \
  --pubkey=$(pointd tendermint show-validator) \
  --moniker="PointWhale" \
  --chain-id=<chain_id> \
  --commission-rate="0.10" \
  --commission-max-rate="0.20" \
  --commission-max-change-rate="0.01" \
  --min-self-delegation="1" \
  --gas="auto" \
  --gas-prices="0.025apoint" \
  --from=<key_name>

Start testnet

The final step is to start the nodes. Once enough voting power (+2/3) from the genesis validators is up-and-running, the testnet will start producing blocks.

pointd start

Upgrading Your Node

tip

These instructions are for full nodes that have ran on previous versions of and would like to upgrade to the latest testnet version.

Reset Data

danger

If the version <new_version> you are upgrading to is not breaking from the previous one, you should not reset the data. If this is the case you can skip to Restart

First, remove the outdated files and reset the data.

rm $HOME/.pointd/config/addrbook.json $HOME/.pointd/config/genesis.json
pointd tendermint unsafe-reset-all --home $HOME/.pointd

Your node is now in a pristine state while keeping the original priv_validator.json and config.toml. If you had any sentry nodes or full nodes setup before, your node will still try to connect to them, but may fail if they haven't also been upgraded.

Warning

Make sure that every node has a unique priv_validator.json. Do not copy the priv_validator.json from an old node to multiple new nodes. Running two nodes with the same priv_validator.json will cause you to double sign.

Restart

To restart your node, just type:

pointd start

Share your Peer

You can share your peer to posting it in the #find-peers channel in the Point Discord.

tip

To get your Node ID use

pointd tendermint show-node-id