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Deploy a subnet

Before delving into this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of IPC.
Please note that you do not need to deploy your own subnet, in order to build on one. For deploying smart contracts to an existing subnet, check out the next quickstart.
In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of spinning up your own IPC subnet validator node and anchoring it to the Filecoin Calibration testnet. We will use a repository with a pre-built docker image to simplify deployment of the IPC tooling. Steps include:
Initialize and setup our config
Fund our wallets needed to run our subnet
Create a child subnet
Join the subnet
Prerequisites
This tutorial uses a repository containing a docker compose configuration and docker images pre-built of the main components needed. You will need to have docker installed.
Setting up our Environment
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/consensus-shipyard/ipc-dx-docker.git
cd ipc-dx-docker
Intialize your config
docker compose run ipc-cli config init
You can run nano ~/.ipc/config.toml to double-check that the config file has been populated with the following content:
keystore_path = "~/.ipc"
​
[[subnets]]
id = "/r314159"
​
[subnets.config]
network_type = "fevm"
provider_http = "https://api.calibration.node.glif.io/rpc/v1"
gateway_addr = "0x1AEe8A878a22280fc2753b3C63571C8F895D2FE3"
registry_addr = "0x0b4e239FF21b40120cDa817fba77bD1B366c1bcD"
​
# Subnet template - uncomment and adjust before using
# [[subnets]]
# id = "/r314159/<SUBNET_ID>"
​
# [subnets.config]
# network_type = "fevm"
# provider_http = "<RPC_ADDR>"
# gateway_addr = "0x77aa40b105843728088c0132e43fc44348881da8"
# registry_addr = "0x74539671a1d2f1c8f200826baba665179f53a1b7"
Set up your wallets
You'll need to create a set of wallets to spawn and interact with the subnet. Please make a note of the addresses as you go along, for easy reference.
Create the three different wallets
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet new -w evm
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet new -w evm
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet new -w evm
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:
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet set-default --address <DEFAULT_ETH_ADDR> -w evm
Go to the Calibration faucet and get some funds sent to each of your addresses
This tutorial uses a pre-built docker image to simplify the process of deploying your own subnet using IPC.
Create a child subnet
The next step is to create a subnet under /r314159 in calibration. Remember to set a default wallet or explicitly specifying the wallet from which you want to perform the action with the --from flag.
docker compose run ipc-cli subnet create --parent /r314159 --min-validators 3 --min-validator-stake 1 --bottomup-check-period 30
Make a note of the address of the subnet you created.
Join the subnet
Before we deploy the infrastructure for the subnet, we will have to bootstrap the subnet and join from our validators. We will put some initial collateral into the subnet and give 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, providing their corresponding public key.
Get the public key for all your wallets and note it down. This is the public key that each of your validators will use to sign blocks in the subnet.
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet pub-key -w evm --address <WALLET_ADDR1>
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet pub-key -w evm --address <WALLET_ADDR2>
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet pub-key -w evm --address <WALLET_ADDR3>
Join the subnet with each validator
docker compose run ipc-cli subnet join --from=<WALLET_ADDR1> --subnet=/r314159/<SUBNET_ID> --collateral=10 --public-key=<PUBKEY_WALLET1> --initial-balance 1
docker compose run ipc-cli subnet join --from=<WALLET_ADDR2> --subnet=/r314159/<SUBNET_ID> --collateral=10 --public-key=<PUBKEY_WALLET2> --initial-balance 1
docker compose run ipc-cli subnet join --from=<WALLET_ADDR3> --subnet=/r314159/<SUBNET_ID> --collateral=10 --public-key=<PUBKEY_WALLET3> --initial-balance 1
Deploying a bootstrap validator node
Before running our validators, at least one bootstrap needs to be deployed and advertised in the network. Bootstrap nodes allow validators discover other peers and validators in the network. In the current implementation of IPC, only validators are allowed to advertise bootstrap nodes.
We can deploy a new bootstrap node in the subnet by running:
docker compose run -e CMT_P2P_HOST_PORT=26650 bootstrap
At the end of the output, this command should return the ID of your new bootstrap node:
[cargo-make] INFO - Running Task: cometbft-wait
[cargo-make] INFO - Running Task: cometbft-node-id
[email protected]:26650
[cargo-make] INFO - Build Done in 13.38 seconds.
Remember the address of your bootstrap for the next step. This address has the following format id@ip:port, and by default shows the public IP of your network interface. Feel free to adjust the ip to use a reachable IP for your deployment so other nodes can contact it (in our case our localhost IP, 127.0.0.1).
To advertise the endpoint to the rest of nodes in the network we need to run:
# Example of BOOTSTRAP_ENDPOINT = [email protected]:26650
docker compose run ipc-cli subnet add-bootstrap --subnet=<SUBNET_ID> --endpoint="<BOOTSRAP_ENDPOINT>"
Deploying the validator infrastructure
With the bootstrap node deployed and advertised to the network, we are now ready to deploy the validators that will run the subnet.
First we need to export the private keys of our validators from the addresses that we created with our ipc-cli wallet to a known path so they can be picked by Fendermint to sign blocks. We can use the default repo of IPC for this, ~/.ipc.
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet export -w evm -a <WALLET_ADDR1> --hex -o ~/.ipc/<PRIV_KEY_VALIDATOR_1>
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet export -w evm -a <WALLET_ADDR2> --hex -o ~/.ipc/<PRIV_KEY_VALIDATOR_2>
docker compose run ipc-cli wallet export -w evm -a <WALLET_ADDR3> --hex -o ~/.ipc/<PRIV_KEY_VALIDATOR_3>
Now we have all that we need to deploy the three validators using the following command (configured for each of the validators, i.e. replace the arguments with <..-n> to fit that of the specific validator).
docker compose run ipc cargo make --makefile ./bin/ipc-infra/Makefile.toml \
    -e NODE_NAME=validator-<n> \
    -e PRIVATE_KEY_PATH=<PATH_PRIV_KEY_VALIDATOR_n> \
    -e SUBNET_ID=<SUBNET_ID> \
    -e CMT_P2P_HOST_PORT=<COMETBFT_P2P_PORT_n> -e CMT_RPC_HOST_PORT=<COMETBFT_RPC_PORT_n> \
    -e ETHAPI_HOST_PORT=<ETH_RPC_PORT_n> \
    -e BOOTSTRAPS=<BOOTSTRAP_ENDPOINT> \
    -e PARENT_REGISTRY=<PARENT_REGISTRY_CONTRACT_ADDR> \
    -e PARENT_GATEWAY=<GATEWAY_REGISTRY_CONTRACT_ADDR> \
    child-validator
PARENT_REGISTRY and PARENT_GATEWAY are the contract addresses of the IPC contracts in Calibration. This command also uses the calibration endpoint as default. Finally, you'll need to choose a different NODE_NAME, CMT_HOST_PORT, ETHAPI_HOST_PORT for each of the validators.
With this, we have everything in place, and our subnet should start automatically validating new blocks.
Quickstarts
Deploy smart contract to Mycelium testnet
Last modified 51m ago