How to Set Up a Witness Node?

There is a pretty good witness document https://gitlab.com/blurt/blurt/-/tree/dev/doc/witnesses guides you set up a witness node step-by-step.

Just went thru the document yesterday, the above document is a little bit outdated, so I will show you how I setup my witness node in this post.

Blurt Witness Server Minimum Specs

• CPU: 2+ Cores
• RAM: 4GB
• Storage: 80+GB
• OS: Debian 10 (Buster)
  Make sure it's Debian 10, other OS doesn't work

Set up a Blurt Witness Node

1.Install a dependency:

apt install libncurses5 

2.Run the single-line installer:

bash <(curl -s https://gitlab.com/blurt/blurt/-/raw/dev/doc/witnesses/witness.bash)

3.Run the following commands:

echo "webserver-http-endpoint = 127.0.0.1:8090" >> /blurt/config.ini
echo "rpc-endpoint = 127.0.0.1:8091" >> /blurt/config.ini
systemctl restart blurtd

4.Now you've just got to wait a bit for your machine to import 1.3 million Steem accounts and sync the Blurt Blockchain. To monitor this process, do like:

journalctl -u blurtd -f

When you see individual blocks being produced, it's done and you're ready to proceed

5.Exit the scrolling monitoring logs with Ctrl+C
Now you'll need to run cli_wallet:

cli_wallet

6.Set a password:

set_password yourpassword

7.Creating witness keys:

suggest_brain_key

Copy down its entire output and keep it safely. You'll be using this brain key to control your Witness.

Add private brain key to config.ini to sign blocks as a Witness
8.First exit the cli_wallet:

Ctrl+D

9.In the code below, replace BRAIN_KEY_WIF_PRIV_KEY with the previously generated Brain wif_priv_key and replace BLURT_ID with your own Blurt account name:

echo "private-key = BRAIN_KEY_WIF_PRIV_KEY" >> /blurt/config.ini
echo 'witness = "BLURT_ID"' >> /blurt/config.ini
systemctl restart blurtd
systemctl status blurtd

Paste all four of the lines above in one hit into the command line and press enter once.


Declare that you're a Witness


10.Use the command cli_wallet to go back into the wallet and then unlock it with:

unlock yourpasswordhere

11.Import your Blurt Active key:

import_key 5MYBLURTACTIVEKEY

12.Use the below code, but first replace the "BLURT_ID" with your Blurt account name; also replace the blog URL with your own blog url and the Brain public key with yours, which you generated from step 7:

update_witness "BLURT_ID" "https://your-blog-url" "BRAIN_KEY_PUB_KEY_GOES_HERE" {"account_creation_fee":"5.000 BLURT","maximum_block_size":65536} true

Success looks like this:

{
  "ref_block_num": 12141,
  "ref_block_prefix": 747640993,
  "expiration": "2020-06-15T16:54:30",
  "operations": [[
      "witness_update",{
        "owner": "jacobgadikian",
        "url": "https://whaleshares.io/@faddat",
        "block_signing_key": "BLT8mBSoVWNcXqsk2PHTfJCxRz9ebJgz8e1WgAnuqQBpTjs9UXqGh",
        "props": {
          "account_creation_fee": "3.000 BLURT",
          "maximum_block_size": 65536,
          "account_subsidy_budget": 797,
          "account_subsidy_decay": 347321
        },
        "fee": "0.000 BLURT"
      }
    ]
  ],
  "extensions": [],
  "signatures": [
    "1f132ce16452adf8667be7a0bb9bf909396dcea8e21093729a8c1b072fd3ad4f9909aa675a131871b0feb582077ea2b7a78c675155e0125f33c5376c087f2438f7"
  ],
  "transaction_id": "d28314a76b29cfb30e8c8de40c819ae38b538181",
  "block_num": 12142,
  "transaction_num": 0
}

Updating Fees
13.Use the below code, but first replace the "BLURT_ID" with your Blurt account name; also Brain public key with yours, which you generated from step 7. You can also adjust account_creation_fee, operation_flat_fee and bandwidth_kbytes_fee as desired.

update_witness_properties "BLURT_ID" {"key":"BRAIN_KEY_PUB_KEY_GOES_HERE", "account_creation_fee":"5.000 BLURT","maximum_block_size":65536,"account_subsidy_budget": 797, "account_subsidy_decay": 347321, "operation_flat_fee":"0.001 BLURT","bandwidth_kbytes_fee":"0.010 BLURT"} true

You are done now. Once you produce your first block, your witness node version will be updated(Initially the version is 0.0.0).

Useful Links/Tools

• Vote for witnesses: https://blurtwallet.com/~witnesses
• Check witnesses: https://blocks.blurtwallet.com/#/witnesses
• Witness Node Guide: https://gitlab.com/blurt/blurt/-/tree/dev/doc/witnesses
• Blurt Witness Nodes Auto Switcher: https://blurt.world/blurtopian/@ericet/blurt-witness-nodes-auto-switcher
• Got notified for missing blocks: https://blurt.world/blurt/@ericet/dino-a-discord-notifications-bot-for-blurt