Nomic Bitcoin Bridge

Testnet Interchain Upgrade

This testnet version is the release candidate for the upcoming Stakenet upgrade.

Upgrading existing nodes

If you're upgrading your existing testnet node:

1. Rebuild from this branch with:

git pull

cargo install --locked --path .

2. Shut down your running node.

3. Restart your node with nomic start.

Your node will automatically perform the upgrade on Friday, October 7 at 17:00 UTC.

Node setup guide

This guide will walk you through setting up a node for the Nomic testnet.

If you need any help getting your node running, join the Discord and ask for the Validator role.

Requirements

• >= 4GB RAM
• >= 100GB of storage
• Linux or macOS (Windows support coming soon)

1. Build Nomic

Start by building Nomic - for now this requires Rust nightly. Install rustup if you haven't already:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Install nightly as well (nomic currently requires rust nightly):

rustup default nightly

Install required dependencies (ubuntu):

sudo apt install build-essential libssl-dev pkg-config clang

For systems running fedora:

sudo dnf install clang openssl-devel && sudo dnf group install "C Development Tools and Libraries"

Clone the github folder and switch to the correct folder:

git clone https://github.com/nomic-io/nomic.git && cd nomic
git checkout testnet

Build and install, adding a nomic command to your PATH:

cargo install --locked --path .

2. Run your node

Start your Nomic node:

nomic start

This will run the Nomic state machine and a Tendermint process. For new nodes the statesync process will run automatically to get the node up to speed with the current chain.

3. Acquiring coins and staking for voting power

First, find your address by running nomic balance (for now this must be run on the same machine as your active full node).

Ask the Nomic team for some coins in the Discord and include your address.

Once you have received coins, you can declare your node as a validator and delegate to yourself with:

nomic declare \
  <validator_consensus_key> \
  <amount> \
  <commission_rate> \
  <max_commission_rate> \
  <max_commission_rate_change_per_day> \
  <min_self_delegation> \
  <moniker> \
  <website> \
  <identity> \
  <details>

IMPORTANT NOTE: Carefully double-check all the fields since you will not be able to modify the commission_max or commission_max_change after declaring. If you make a mistake, you will have to declare a new validator instead.

• The validator_consensus_key field is the base64 pubkey value field found under "validator_info" in the output of http://localhost:26657/status.
• The identity field is the 64-bit hex key suffix found on your Keybase profile, used to get your profile picture in wallets and block explorers.

For example:

nomic declare \
  ohFOw5u9LGq1ZRMTYZD1Y/WrFtg7xfyBaEB4lSgfeC8= \
  100000 \
  0.042 \
  0.1 \
  0.01 \
  100000 \
  "Foo's Validator" \
  "https://foovalidator.com" \
  37AA68F6AA20B7A8 \
  "Please delegate to me!"

4. Run your Bitcoin signer

The funds in the Bitcoin bridge are held in a large multisig controlled by the Nomic validators. If you are a validator with a significant amount of voting power, it is very important that you run a signer.

i. Set your signatory key

This will submit your public key to the network so you can be added to the multisig. If you do not have a key stored at ~/.nomic-testnet-4c/signer/xpriv, this will automatically generate a Bitcoin extended private key for you. KEEP THIS KEY SAFE - similar to your validator private key, it is important to be mindful of this key so that it is never lost or stolen.

Note: Setting your signatory key is only required if you are starting a fresh node. Migrating nodes can move on to the next step.

nomic set-signatory-key

If you have your extended private key stored in a different location than the default, you may pass a path.

nomic set-signatory-key <path-to-your-key>

ii. Run your Bitcoin signer

You can run the signer with:

nomic signer

If you have stored your xpriv in a different location, you can pass the path to the signer.

nomic signer xpriv_paths=[<path_to_your_xpriv>]

Leave this process running, it will automatically sign Bitcoin transactions that the network wants to create.

In the future, we hope for the community to come up with alternative types of signers which provide for extra security, by e.g. airgapping keys, using HSMs, or prompting the user for an encryption key.

5. (Optional) Run a relayer

Relayer nodes carry data between the Bitcoin blockchain and the Nomic blockchain. You can help support the health of the network by running a Bitcoin node alongside your Nomic node and running the relayer process.

i. Sync a Bitcoin node

Download Bitcoin Core: https://bitcoin.org/en/download

Run it with:

bitcoind -server -testnet -rpcuser=satoshi -rpcpassword=nakamoto

(The RPC server only listens on localhost, so the user and password are not critically important.)

NOTE: To save on disk space, you may want to configure your Bitcoin node to prune block storage. For instance, add -prune=5000 to only keep a maximum of 5000 MB of blocks. You may also want to use the -daemon option to keep the node running in the background.

ii. Run the relayer process

nomic relayer --rpc-port=18332 --rpc-user=satoshi --rpc-pass=nakamoto

Leave this running - the relayer will constantly scan the Bitcoin and Nomic chains and broadcast relevant data.

The relayer will also create a server which listens on port 8999 for clients to announce their deposit addresses. To help make the network more reliable, if you run a relayer please open this port and let us know your node's address in Discord or a Github issue so we can have clients make use of your node. If you're going to make this service public, putting the server behind an HTTP reverse proxy is recommended for extra safety.

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Thanks for participating in the Nomic Testnet! We'll be updating the network often so stay tuned in Discord for updates.