Compiling and Running a Node
Please read the whole document first before executing commands, to understand all the steps required and how each component operates. Unless instructed otherwise, each daemon runs on its own shell, so don't stop a running one to start another.
Each command to execute will be inside a codeblock, on its first line,
marked by the user $ symbol, followed by the expected output. For
longer command outputs, some lines will be emmited to keep the guide
simple.
We also strongly suggest to first execute next guide steps on a local environment to become familiar with each command, before broadcasting transactions to the actual network.
Overview
This tutorial will cover the three DarkFi blockchain components and their current features. The components covered are:
darkfidis the DarkFi fullnode. It validates blockchain transactions and stays connected to the p2p network.drkis a CLI wallet. It provides an interface to smart contracts such as Money and DAO, manages our keys and coins, and scans the blockchain to update our balances.minerdis the DarkFi mining daemon.darkfidconnects to it over RPC, and triggers commands to mine blocks.
The config files for darkfid and drk are sectioned into three parts,
each marked [network_config]. The sections look like this:
[network_config."testnet"][network_config."mainnet"][network_config."localnet"]
At the top of the darkfid and drk config file, we can modify the
network being used by changing the following line:
# Blockchain network to use
network = "testnet"
This enables us to configure darkfid and drk for different contexts,
namely mainnet, testnet and localnet. Mainnet is not active yet. Localnet
can be setup by following the instructions here. The
rest of this tutorial assumes we are setting up a testnet node.
Compiling
Since this is still an early phase, we will not be installing any of the software system-wide. Instead, we'll be running all the commands from the git repository, so we're able to easily pull any necessary updates.
Refer to the main DarkFi page for instructions on how to install Rust and necessary deps. Skip last step of the build process, as you don't need to compile all binaries of the project.
Once you have the repository in place, and everything is installed, we
can compile the darkfid node and the drk wallet CLI:
$ make darkfid drk
...
make -C bin/darkfid \
PREFIX="/home/anon/.cargo" \
CARGO="cargo" \
RUST_TARGET="x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu" \
RUSTFLAGS=""
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/anon/darkfi/bin/darkfid'
RUSTFLAGS="" cargo build --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --release --package darkfid
...
Compiling darkfid v0.5.0 (/home/anon/darkfi/bin/darkfid)
Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 4m 19s
cp -f ../../target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/darkfid darkfid
cp -f ../../target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/darkfid ../../darkfid
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/anon/darkfi/bin/darkfid'
make -C bin/drk \
PREFIX="/home/anon/.cargo" \
CARGO="cargo" \
RUST_TARGET="x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu" \
RUSTFLAGS=""
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/anon/darkfi/bin/drk'
RUSTFLAGS="" cargo build --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --release --package drk
...
Compiling drk v0.5.0 (/home/anon/darkfi/bin/drk)
Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 2m 16s
cp -f ../../target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/drk drk
cp -f ../../target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/drk ../../drk
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/anon/darkfi/bin/drk'
This process will now compile the node and the wallet CLI tool.
When finished, we can begin using the network. Run darkfid and drk
once so their config files are spawned on your system. These config files
will be used to darkfid and drk.
Please note that the exact paths may differ depending on your local setup.
$ ./darkfid
Config file created in "~/.config/darkfi/darkfid_config.toml". Please review it and try again.
$ ./drk wallet --address
Config file created in "~/.config/darkfi/drk_config.toml". Please review it and try again.
Running
Using Tor
DarkFi supports Tor for network-level anonymity. To use the testnet over
Tor, you'll need to make some modifications to the darkfid config
file.
For detailed instructions and configuration options on how to do this,
follow the Tor Guide.
The guide is using darkirc port 25552 for seeds and 25551 for
torrc configuration, so in your actual configuration replace them
with darkfid ones, where seeds use port 8343 and torrc should
use port 8342.
Wallet initialization
Now it's time to initialize your wallet. For this we use drk, a separate
wallet CLI which is created to interface with the smart contract used
for payments and swaps.
First, you need to change the password in the drk config. Open
your config file in a text editor (the default path is
~/.config/darkfi/drk_config.toml). Look for the section marked
[network_config."testnet"] and change this line:
# Password for the wallet database
wallet_pass = "changeme"
Once you've changed the default password for your testnet wallet, we can proceed with the wallet initialization. We simply have to initialize a wallet, and create a keypair. The wallet address shown in the outputs is examplatory and will different from the one you get.
$ ./drk wallet --initialize
Initializing Money Merkle tree
Successfully initialized Merkle tree for the Money contract
Generating alias DRK for Token: 241vANigf1Cy3ytjM1KHXiVECxgxdK4yApddL8KcLssb
Initializing DAO Merkle trees
Successfully initialized Merkle trees for the DAO contract
$ ./drk wallet --keygen
Generating a new keypair
New address:
CbaqFqGTgn86Zh9AjUeMw3DJyVCshaPSPFtmj6Cyd5yU
$ ./drk wallet --default-address 1
The second command will print out your new DarkFi address where you can receive payments. Take note of it. Alternatively, you can always retrieve your default address using:
$ ./drk wallet --address
CbaqFqGTgn86Zh9AjUeMw3DJyVCshaPSPFtmj6Cyd5yU
Miner
It's not necessary for broadcasting transactions or proceeding with the
rest of the tutorial (darkfid and drk handle this), but if you want
to help secure the network, you can participate in the mining process
by running the native minerd mining daemon.
To mine on DarkFI we need to expose the minerd RPC to the darkfid
full node, which will initiate the mining process. We'll also need to
add a recipient to darkfid that specifies where the mining rewards
will be minted to.
First, compile it:
$ make minerd
...
make -C bin/minerd \
PREFIX="/home/anon/.cargo" \
CARGO="cargo" \
RUST_TARGET="x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu" \
RUSTFLAGS=""
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/anon/darkfi/bin/minerd'
RUSTFLAGS="" cargo build --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --release --package minerd
...
Compiling minerd v0.5.0 (/home/anon/darkfi/bin/minerd)
Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 1m 25s
cp -f ../../target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/minerd minerd
cp -f ../../target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/minerd ../../minerd
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/anon/darkfi/bin/minerd'
This process will now compile the mining daemon. When finished, run
minerd once so that it spawns its config file on your system. This
config file is used to configure minerd. You can define how many
threads will be used for mining. RandomX can use up to 2080 MiB per
thread so configure it to not consume all your system available memory.
$ ./minerd
Config file created in "~/.config/darkfi/minerd_config.toml". Please review it and try again.
Once that's in place, you can run it again and minerd will start,
waiting for requests to mine blocks.
$ ./minerd
14:20:06 [INFO] Starting DarkFi Mining Daemon...
14:20:06 [INFO] Initializing a new mining daemon...
14:20:06 [INFO] Mining daemon initialized successfully!
14:20:06 [INFO] Starting mining daemon...
14:20:06 [INFO] Mining daemon started successfully!
You now have to expose minerd RPC to darkfid, and configure it
to use your wallet address as the rewards recipient, when submitting
blocks to minerd to mine.
Open your darkfid config file with a text editor (the default path
is ~/.config/darkfi/darkfid_config.toml). Find the recipient and
minerd_endpoint options under [network_config."testnet"], and
uncomment them by removing the # character at the start of line,
like this:
# Put your `minerd` endpoint here (default for testnet is in this example)
minerd_endpoint = "tcp://127.0.0.1:28467"
# Put the address from `drk wallet --address` here
recipient = "YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS_HERE"
Now ensure that minerd_endpoint is set to the same value as the
rpc_listen address in your minerd config (the default path
is ~/.config/darkfi/minerd_config.toml). Finally, replace the
YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS_HERE string with your drk wallet address that
you can retrieve as follows:
$ ./drk wallet --address
CbaqFqGTgn86Zh9AjUeMw3DJyVCshaPSPFtmj6Cyd5yU
Note: when modifying the darkfid config file to use with the
testnet, be sure to change the values under the section marked
[network_config."testnet"] (not localnet or mainnet!).
Darkfid
Now that darkfid configuration is in place, you can run it again and
darkfid will start, create the necessary keys for validation of blocks
and transactions, and begin syncing the blockchain.
$ ./darkfid
14:23:23 [INFO] Initializing DarkFi node...
14:23:23 [INFO] Node is configured to run with fixed PoW difficulty: 1
14:23:23 [INFO] Initializing a Darkfi daemon...
14:23:23 [INFO] Initializing Validator
14:23:23 [INFO] Initializing Blockchain
14:23:23 [INFO] Deploying native WASM contracts
14:23:23 [INFO] Deploying Money Contract with ContractID BZHKGQ26bzmBithTQYTJtjo2QdCqpkR9tjSBopT4yf4o
14:23:29 [INFO] Successfully deployed Money Contract
14:23:29 [INFO] Deploying DAO Contract with ContractID Fd8kfCuqU8BoFFp6GcXv5pC8XXRkBK7gUPQX5XDz7iXj
...
As its syncing, you'll see periodic messages like this:
...
[INFO] Blocks received: 4020/4763
...
This will give you an indication of the current progress. Keep it running,
and you should see a Blockchain synced! message after some time.
If you're running minerd, you should see a notification from the
minerd terminal like this:
...
[INFO] [RPC] Server accepted conn from tcp://127.0.0.1:44974/
...
This means that darkfid and minerd are connected over RPC and
minerd can start mining. You will see log messages like these:
...
14:23:56 [INFO] Mining block 4abc760a1f1c7198837e91c24d8e045e9fc9cb9fdf3a5fd45e184c25b03b0b51 for target:
115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935
14:24:04 [INFO] Mined block 4abc760a1f1c7198837e91c24d8e045e9fc9cb9fdf3a5fd45e184c25b03b0b51 with nonce: 2
14:24:06 [INFO] Received request to mine block 17e7428ecb3d911477f8452170d0822c831c6912027abb120e4b4c4cf01d6020 for target:
115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935
14:24:06 [INFO] Checking if a pending request is being processed...
...
When darkfid and minerd are correctly connected and you get an
error like this:
...
[ERROR] minerd::rpc: Failed mining block f6b4a0f0c8f90905da271ec0add2e856939ef3b0d6cd5b28964d9c2b6d0a0fa9 with error:
Miner task stopped
...
That's expected behavior. It means your setup is correct and you are
mining blocks. Failed mining block happens when a new block was
received by darkfid, extending the current best fork, so it sends an
interuption message to minerd to stop mining the current block and
start mining the next height one.
Otherwise, you'll see a notification like this:
...
[INFO] Mined block b6c7bd3545daa81d0e2e56ee780363beef6eb5b54579f54dca0cdd2a59989b76 with nonce: 266292
...
Which means the current height block has been mined succesfully by
minerd and propagated to darkfid so it can broadcast it to the
network.
Wallet sync
In order to receive incoming coins, you'll need to use the drk
tool to subscribe on darkfid so you can receive notifications for
incoming blocks. The blocks have to be scanned for transactions,
and to find coins that are intended for you. In another terminal,
you can run the following commands to first scan the blockchain,
and then to subscribe to new blocks:
$ ./drk scan
...
Requested to scan from block number: 0
Last confirmed block reported by darkfid: 1 - da4455f461df6833a68b659d1770f58e44b6bc4abdd934cb22d084c24333255f
Requesting block 0...
Block 0 received! Scanning block...
=======================================
Header {
Hash: b967812a860e8bf43deb03dd4f7cf69258f7719ddb7f2183d4e4fa3559b9f39d
Version: 1
Previous: 86bbac430a4b3a182f125b37a486e9c486bbfa34d84ef4a66b4a23e5f0c625b1
Height: 0
Timestamp: 2025-05-12T13:00:24
Nonce: 0
Transactions Root: 0x081361c364feba0d28a418e2e20c216ce442d5127036e3491ceaf1996fdb3c3b
State Root: afc1694dd6b290d8b92c33d3fc746707da9bed857eb9e90f11683d2e243b8047
Proof of Work data: Darkfi
}
=======================================
[scan_block] Iterating over 1 transactions
[scan_block] Processing transaction: 91525ff00a3755a8df93c626b59f6e36cf021d85ebccecdedc38f3f1890a15fc
Requesting block 1...
Block 1 received! Scanning block...
...
Requested to scan from block number: 2
Last confirmed block reported by darkfid: 1 - da4455f461df6833a68b659d1770f58e44b6bc4abdd934cb22d084c24333255f
Finished scanning blockchain
$ ./drk subscribe
Subscribing to receive notifications of incoming blocks
Detached subscription to background
All is good. Waiting for block notifications...
Now you can leave the subscriber running. In case you stop it, just
run drk scan again until the chain is fully scanned, and then you
should be able to subscribe again.
Local Deployment
For local (non-testnet) development we recommend running master, and
use the existing contrib/localnet/darkfid-single-node folder, which
provides the corresponding configurations to operate. Some outputs are
emitted since they are identical to previous steps.
First, compile darkfid node, minerd mining daemon and the drk
wallet CLI:
$ make darkfid minerd drk
Enter the localnet folder, and initialize a wallet:
$ cd contrib/localnet/darkfid-single-node/
$ ./init-wallet.sh
Then start darkfid and wait until its initialized:
$ ./tmux_sessions.sh
After some blocks have been generated we
will see some DRK in our test wallet.
On a different shell(or tmux pane in the session),
navigate to contrib/localnet/darkfid-single-node
folder again and check wallet balance
$ ./wallet-balance.sh
Token ID | Aliases | Balance
----------------------------------------------+---------+---------
241vANigf1Cy3ytjM1KHXiVECxgxdK4yApddL8KcLssb | DRK | 20
Don't forget that when using this local node, all operations
should be executed inside the contrib/localnet/darkfid-single-node
folder, and ./drk command to be replaced by ../../../drk -c drk.toml
Advanced Usage
To run a node in full debug mode:
$ LOG_TARGETS='!sled,!rustls,!net' ./darkfid -vv | tee /tmp/darkfid.log
The sled and net targets are very noisy and slow down the node so
we disable those.
We can now view the log, and grep through it.
$ tail -n +0 -f /tmp/darkfid.log | grep -a --line-buffered -v DEBUG