cardano-ignite

Index

• Information
  • Showcase
  • Target Audience
  • Tech Stack
• Requirements
• Installation
• Getting Started
  • Useful Commands
• Appendix

Information

Cardano Ignite is a toolbox for rapidly deploying and managing Cardano testnets with multiple stake-pools distributed across different simulated regions. It comes with helper tools, such as cardano-db-sync, Blockfrost, Prometheus and Loki. The testnet topology, log files and cardano-node metrics are visualized in built-in Grafana dashboards.

Showcase

Status	Block Chain

Physical Topology	Localroot Topology

Network	Process

Target Audience

This project is designed for developers and end users who wish to run their own Cardano testnet for rapid development or experimentation. It is not intended for performance benchmarking or integration testing, such as the Antithesis project.

Tech Stack

The following list provides an overview of the key tools and technologies used in the Cardano Ignite project.

Name	Description	Link
Blackbox Exporter	A Prometheus Exporter for probing endpoints over multiple protocols.	https://github.com/prometheus/blackbox_exporter
Blockfrost	A blockchain explorer and API for Cardano.	https://github.com/blockfrost/blockfrost-backend-ryo
Cardano CLI	A command-line interface for the Cardano blockchain.	https://github.com/IntersectMBO/cardano-cli
Cardano DB Sync	A database synchronization tool for the Cardano ledger.	https://github.com/IntersectMBO/cardano-db-sync
Cardano Node	A node implementation of the Cardano blockchain.	https://github.com/IntersectMBO/cardano-node
Cardano TX Generator	A tool for generating transactions on the Cardano blockchain.	https://github.com/IntersectMBO/cardano-node/tree/master/bench/tx-generator
CoreDNS	A flexible, extensible DNS server.	https://github.com/coredns/coredns
Grafana	A open and composable observability and data visualization platform.	https://github.com/grafana/grafana
Loki	A log aggregation system designed to store and query logs.	https://github.com/grafana/loki
PostgreSQL	An object-relational database system.	https://www.postgresql.org
Prometheus	A systems and service monitoring system.	https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus

Requirements

Cardano Ignite builds on top of Docker Compose. Due to dependencies related to networking, its current compatibility is limited to Linux-based operating systems.

The following applications are required:

• Docker
• Docker Compose
• Docker Plugin Loki
• Git
• Make
• yq

Installation

Please consult the SETUP.md file for detailed installation instructions.

Getting Started

• Pull the Cardano Ignite Git repository

  git clone https://github.com/cardano-foundation/cardano-ignite.git
  cd ./cardano-ignite/
  

• List all pre-defined testnets

  ls -l ./testnets/
  

• Build the global_network testnet

  make build testnet=global_network
  

• Start the global_network testnet without optional containers

  make up testnet=global_network
  

• Start the global_network testnet with optional containers (Blockfrost, TX Generator...)

  make up-all testnet=global_network
  

• Open your browser and navigate to
  http://localhost:3000

• Enter the credentials below

  Username:
  cardano
  
  Password:
  cardano
  

• Stop the global_network testnet

  make down testnet=global_network
  

Useful Commands

• Show available commands

  make help
  

• Check for consensus among all pools

  make validate
  

• Show latest block and slot from cardano-db-sync

  make dbsync
  

• Show latest information about the latest block from Blockfrost

  make block
  

• Show detail about all stake-pools from Blockfrost

  make pools
  

Appendix

• testnet-generation-tool