Avalanche

💡

Consensus chain

This chain is verified by Axelar validators. Before setting up this node, set up your Axelar validator. Once the node is running, connect it to vald as described in Verify consensus chains.

💡

Check the official documentation

The node setup steps below follow Avalanche's own documentation at the time of writing and may be out of date. Check the official documentation before you start. The Axelar-specific steps (connecting the node to vald or ampd) are maintained here.

Instructions to set up your Avalanche node.

Requirements

Setup your Axelar validator
Minimum hardware requirements: 8 AWS vCPU+, 16GB RAM, 500GB+ free storage space.
MacOS or Ubuntu 20.04 (tested on 20.04)
Official Documentation

Prerequisites

sudo apt-get install wget jq -y

Get Binaries

Check the appropriate version for the network accordingly in their docs or choose the latest release

 # This is an example - check their docs and release page to opt for the right version
AVALANCHEGO=v1.9.3

 # This is an example - check their docs and release page to opt for the right version
AVALANCHEGO=v1.9.3

# verify correct versions
echo $AVALANCHEGO

# create a temp dir for binaries
cd $HOME
mkdir binaries && cd binaries


# get avalanchego binary and rename
wget https://github.com/ava-labs/avalanchego/releases/download/$AVALANCHEGO/avalanchego-linux-amd64-$AVALANCHEGO.tar.gz
tar -xvf avalanchego-linux-amd64-$AVALANCHEGO.tar.gz
rm avalanchego-linux-amd64-$AVALANCHEGO.tar.gz
cd avalanchego-$AVALANCHEGO

# make binaries executable
chmod +x *

# move to usr bin
sudo mv * /usr/bin/

# get out of binaries directory
cd $HOME

# verify version
avalanchego --version

Set environment variables

Note: Update your shell profile in accordance with the shell you are using

echo export NETWORK_ID=mainnet >> $HOME/.profile

echo export NETWORK_ID=fuji >> $HOME/.profile

Apply your changes

source $HOME/.profile

Create services

Use systemctl to set up service for avalanchego.

avalanchego

sudo tee <<EOF >/dev/null /etc/systemd/system/avalanchego.service
[Unit]
Description=Avalanche daemon
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/avalanchego --http-host= --network-id=$NETWORK_ID
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=32768

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF


# verify and enable
cat /etc/systemd/system/avalanchego.service
sudo systemctl enable avalanchego

Start the service

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart avalanchego

Check logs

# change log settings to persistent if not already
sed -i 's/#Storage=auto/Storage=persistent/g' /etc/systemd/journald.conf
sudo systemctl restart systemd-journald

journalctl -u avalanchego.service -f -n 100 -o cat

Logs should appear like this

[11-28|07:50:59.280] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 85000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h52m8s"}
[11-28|07:51:13.370] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 90000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h53m58s"}
[11-28|07:51:29.644] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 95000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h56m46s"}
[11-28|07:51:43.864] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 100000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h58m12s"}
[11-28|07:51:52.789] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 105000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h56m50s"}
[11-28|07:52:06.814] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 110000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h58m0s"}
[11-28|07:52:17.979] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 115000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h57m45s"}
[11-28|07:52:31.488] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 120000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h58m31s"}
[11-28|07:52:40.475] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 125000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h57m20s"}
[11-28|07:52:53.462] INFO <P Chain> bootstrap/bootstrapper.go:481 fetching blocks {"numFetchedBlocks": 130000, "numTotalBlocks": 3241631, "eta": "1h57m49s"}

Verify

YOUR_IP=$(curl -4 ifconfig.co)

curl -X POST --data '{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "id"     :1,
    "method" :"info.isBootstrapped",
    "params": {
        "chain":"X"
    }
}' -H 'content-type:application/json;' $YOUR_IP:9650/ext/info | jq

If you get something like this in response of the above rpc call, your node is setup correctly

Wait for isBootstrapped to become true before using it in vald config

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "result": {
    "isBootstrapped": false # wait for it to become true
  },
  "id": 1
}

Endpoint

echo "${YOUR_IP}:9650/ext/bc/C/rpc"

Configure vald

In order for vald to connect to your Avalanche node, your rpc_addr should be exposed in vald's config.toml

start-with-bridge = true

start-with-bridge = true

On this page