Run an at-home watchtower
Steps to run a Witness Chain watchtower client (PoL Challenger Client)
The PoL Challenger Client Node is a DePIN Challenger node that participates in the PoL (Proof-of-Location) protocol and measures the location claims made by a DePIN Prover.
PoL Challenger Client Nodes can be run on community members’ laptops, desktops or even on cloud instances. As long as the node is running, there is a probabilistic algorithm (based on stake in the upcoming releases) that determines if the node will participate in a PoL challenge from the network.
Before a node can participate as PoL Challenger, it has to prove it's own capabilities (run a prover to prove it's own location - this mechanism is inbuilt in the challenger client container)
Prerequisites
Before you begin, ensure you have the following
Docker (version 23.0.0 or above, refer: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/install/linux-install/)
Instance comparable to a t2 micro (1 vcpu, 1GB RAM and 5GB harddisk), though we recommend 2 cores, 4 GB RAM and 10 GB of storage.
Running your watchtower client
Explorer: https://blue-orangutan-blockscout.eu-north-2.gateway.fm/
Our chain is gasless, so you do NOT have to fund either or the operator or challenger account with tokens.
Key Points to consider before proceeding...
Note: For EigenLayer operators, it's important to maintain the distinction between Operator Key and Challenger Key. Refer the correct docs for setup as an EL operator here
We have 2 sets of keys - Operator Key and Challenger Key.
Operator Key is the ownership key that is used for registering one or more the Challenger Key(s).
Challenger Key - This is the signing key for the PoL Challenger Client. Create a new Key for the same. Don't reuse the Operator Key for the Challenger Key. It has to be a ECDSA Key.
As a DePIN watchtower partner, you can use the same key for Operator Key and Challenger Key
Ports to be opened if using public IP:
1. Registering the Challenger Key
You can register the challenger key easily with the help of our registration cli, to do so
Download our dcl-operator-cli
Follow the steps as directed in the output of the script to add the CLI to the shell profile to be able to use the CLI from anywhere.
Prepare the config (challenger registration config),
The above command also downloads a template which you can refer to.
Make sure you set the
challenger_private_keys
attribute in the json file with the key, that you provided inprivate.key
Run the following command for challenger registration
Prepare the config (prover registration config),
The above command also downloads a template which you can refer to.
Make sure you set the
prover_private_keys
attribute in the json file with the key, that you provided inprivate.key
Run the following command for registration
Ensure the operator address is correctly set in the watchtower's config.json,
as the contributions are attributed to the operator!
2. Setting up the challenger keys and the config file
Use ECDSA Keypairs
Create a ECDSA private key using Metamask or other utilities that will be used as Challenger Key
You can pass the required configuration to the docker container env via a file or directly with
-e
flag in the run command (read more). Prepare a configuration filewatchtower.env
with the following entries as example shown below:
Explanation:
privateKey
is your PoL signing key (Challenger Key)walletPublicKey
is the wallet addresses where your contributions go (Operator Key)havePublicIPv4Address
(andhavePublicIPv6Address
) set them to true if you have a public IPv4 (or IPv6)havePrivateIPv4Address
(andhavePrivateIPv6Address
) set them to true if you want to force the use of private IPsaveResultsInDatabase
saves the login, session, and challenge related data in a.sqlite
file within the container
3. Running the watchtower
Once you have the watchtower.env
ready, the challenger client can be started with
you can verify that the challenger is running by looking at the container status
Explanation:
docker run -d
: Runs the container in detached mode (in the background).
You may observe the following errors in the docker container
"registration is required on DCL contract. Please register your challenger publicKey:"
Don't worry, this is normal. if you COMPLETE STEP 1, these logs should disappear
Post Setup
Once the setting up and registration is successful, you can check the logs from the challenger client ready for challenges. (docker logs pol-challenger
). Congratulations, you are now a part of our DePIN family!
Troubleshooting
As the only prerequisite is docker, make sure you are running atleast version 23.0.0 or above for the commands mentioned in the doc to work. The days might be rainy or snowy, but we've got umbrellas and sweaters! Join our Discord or reach out to us over Telegram—we're happy to help. :D
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