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Deploy a subnet

Tutorial to deploy your first custom IPC subnet

Ready to test the waters with your first subnet? This guide will deploy a subnet with three local validators orchestrated by ipc-cli. This subnet will be anchored to the public Calibration testnet. This will be a minimal example and may not work on all systems. The full documentation provides more details on each step.

Several steps in this guide involve running long-lived processes. In each of these cases, the guide advises starting a new session. Depending on your set-up, you may do this using tools like screen or tmux, or, if using a graphical environment, by opening a new terminal tab, pane, or window.

Step 1: Prepare your system

Install the basic requirements for IPC

  • Install system packages: sudo apt install build-essential clang cmake pkg-config libssl-dev protobuf-compiler git curl.

  • Install Rust. See instructions.

  • Install cargo-make: cargo install --force cargo-make.

  • Install Docker. See instructions.

  • Install Node.js. See instructions.

  • Install Foundry. See instructions.

Also install the following dependencies (details)

sudo apt update && sudo apt install build-essential libssl-dev mesa-opencl-icd ocl-icd-opencl-dev gcc git bzr jq pkg-config curl clang hwloc libhwloc-dev wget ca-certificates gnupg -y

Building

NOTE: this step may take a while to compile, depending on OS version and hardware build

# make sure that rust has the wasm32 target & use stable version of rustc
rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
rustup default stable

# add your user to the docker group
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER && newgrp docker

# clone this repo and build
git clone https://github.com/consensus-shipyard/ipc.git
cd ipc
make

# building will generate the following binaries
./target/release/ipc-cli --version
./target/release/fendermint --version

Step 2: Initialize your config

  • Initialize the config

This should have populated a default config file with all the parameters required to connect to calibration at ~/.ipc/config.toml. Feel free to update this configuration to fit your needs.

You have two options for setting up the contracts: use the public shared contracts or deploy your own private contracts.

Option A: Use Public Shared Contracts

The IPC stack is changing rapidly. To make sure you use the latest contracts deployed on Filecoin Calibration:

  • Run nano ~/.ipc/config.toml to see your configuration

  • Replace the gateway_addr and registry_addr with the following values. Click on the badges below to take you to the source to copy and paste them or go to this link.

    Gateway Address Registry Address

Option B: Deploy Your Own Private Contracts

If you want to deploy your own custom IPC stack of contracts (recommended for production or private testing):

When to use your own contracts:

  • You want full control over the IPC infrastructure

  • You're developing custom functionality

  • You need a private testing environment

  • You want to avoid potential conflicts with other users on shared contracts

Step 1: Prepare for contract deployment

Step 2: Ensure you have a funded address

Make sure you have an Ethereum address with funds from the Calibration faucet:

  1. Get your address: ipc-cli wallet show --wallet-type evm

  2. Fund it at: https://faucet.calibration.fildev.network/

  3. Note your address - you'll need it for the deployment command

Why you need a funded Ethereum address:

Throughout IPC, you'll use Ethereum-format addresses (0x...) for:

  • Contract deployment (paying gas fees)

  • Subnet operations (creating, joining, managing subnets)

  • Cross-subnet messaging (sending funds between subnets)

  • Checkpoint relaying (submitting checkpoint transactions)

This address must be funded with testnet tokens and stored in your IPC keystore.

Step 3: Compile contracts

Step 4: Deploy the contracts using ipc-cli

About the Submitter Address (--from parameter):

The submitter address is your own Ethereum address (0x format) that will:

  • Deploy the contracts to the blockchain

  • Pay for gas fees during deployment

  • Own the deployed contracts (you'll be the contract owner)

Requirements:

  • Must be an Ethereum-format address (0x...), not Filecoin format (t4...)

  • Must have sufficient funds to pay for deployment gas costs

  • Must be in your IPC keystore (the address you got from ipc-cli wallet show --wallet-type evm)

Important: Replace <YOUR_ADDRESS_HERE> with your actual Ethereum address that has funds from the faucet. Use the address from step 2 above.

Step 5: Note the deployed contract addresses

After deployment, look for output similar to this in your terminal:

Important: Save these addresses! You'll need them for configuration and they represent YOUR deployed contracts.

Step 6: Update your IPC configuration

Run nano ~/.ipc/config.toml to edit your configuration file and replace the addresses with your newly deployed contracts:

Step 7: Verify deployment (Optional)

You can verify your contracts are working by checking them on the Calibration Explorer:

  • Go to https://calibration.filfox.info/en

  • Search for your Gateway and Registry contract addresses

  • Verify they exist and have been deployed correctly

Note: If you deployed your own contracts, make sure to use YOUR contract addresses in all subsequent steps in this guide, particularly when setting up the validators with PARENT_GATEWAY and PARENT_REGISTRY environment variables.

Step 3: Set up your wallets

Since we are setting up a subnet with multiple validators, we will create a set of wallets to spawn and interact within the subnet.

TIP: Note down wallet and subnet addresses and keys as you go along

  • Create four different wallets (we recommend a minimum of 4 for BFT security)

  • You can optionally set one of the wallets as your default so you don't have to use the --from flag explicitly in some of the commands:

NOTE: you may hit faucet rate limits. In that case, wait a few minutes or continue with the guide and come back to this before step 9. Alternatively, you can send funds from your primary wallet to your owner wallets.

TIP: If you'd like to import an EVM account into Metamask, you can use export the private key using ipc-cli wallet export --wallet-type evm --address <ADDRESS>. More information is available in the EVM IPC agent support docs.

Step 4: Create a child subnet

  • The next step is to create a subnet under /r314159 calibration. Remember to set a default wallet or explicitly specify the wallet from which you want to perform the action with the --from flag.

This will output your subnet ID, similar to the following:

Make a note of the address of the subnet you created because you will use it below.

Step 5: Join the subnet

Before we deploy the infrastructure for the subnet, we will have to bootstrap the subnet and join from our validators, putting some initial collateral into the subnet and giving our validator address some initial balance in the subnet. For this, we need to send a join command from each of our validators from their validator owner addresses.

Step 6: Deploy the infrastructure

First, we need to export the validator private keys for all wallets into separate files which we will use to set up a validator node.

Let's start our first validator which the rest of the validators will bootstrap from. Make sure you have docker running before running this command.

Once the first validator is up and running, it will print out the relative information for this validator.

TIP: Highly recommend documenting that information which will be useful to bootstrap other validators, connect to the IPC subnet on MetaMask, etc.

You'll need the final component of the IPLD Resolver Multiaddress (the peer ID) and the CometBFT node ID for the next nodes to start.

  • BOOTSTRAPS: <CometBFT node ID for validator1>@validator-1-cometbft:26656

  • RESOLVER_BOOTSTRAPS: /dns/validator-1-fendermint/tcp/26655/p2p/<Peer ID in IPLD Resolver Multiaddress>

Now, run the 2nd validator in a separate terminal.

Now, the 3rd:

And finally, the 4th:

NOTE:

  • Use full path to PRIVATE_KEY_PATH, don't path with "~"

  • Do not change values of any port from the ones provided unless you have to

  • If you are deploying all validators on a single server, ports will need to be different, as shown in above examples. If you are deploying them from different servers, the ports can be similar.

Step 7: Interact with your subnet using the IPC CLI

  • Make sure ~/.ipc/config.toml contains the configuration of your subnet in the "Subnet template" section. Uncomment the section and populate the corresponding fields

NOTE: The ETH addresses for gateway_addr and registry_addr used when they are deployed in genesis in a child subnet by Fendermint are 0x77aa40b105843728088c0132e43fc44348881da8 and 0x74539671a1d2f1c8f200826baba665179f53a1b7, respectively, so no need to change them.

  • Fetch the balances of your wallets using the following command. The result should show the initial balance that you have included for your validator address in genesis:

Step 8: Run a relayer

IPC relies on the role of a specific type of peer on the network called the relayers that are responsible for submitting bottom-up checkpoints that have been finalized in a child subnet to its parent.

This process is key for the commitment of child subnet checkpoints in the parent, and the execution of bottom-up cross-net messages. Without relayers, cross-net messages will only flow from top levels of the hierarchy to the bottom, but not the other way around.

  • Run the relayer process passing the 0x address of the submitter account:

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