Kadena Public Blockchain

Kadena is a fast, secure, and scalable blockchain using the Chainweb consensus protocol. Chainweb is a braided, parallelized Proof Of Work consensus mechanism that improves throughput and scalability in executing transactions on the blockchain while maintaining the security and integrity found in Bitcoin.

Read our whitepapers:

• Chainweb: A Proof-of-Work Parallel-Chain Architecture for Massive Throughput
• Agent-based Simulations of Blockchain Protocols illustrated via Kadena's Chainweb

For additional information, press, and development inquires, please refer to the Kadena website

Table of Contents

• Kadena Docs Site
• Installing Chainweb
  • Instructions for Linux Users
  • Instructions for Mac Users
• Bootstrap Nodes
• Configuring, running, and monitoring the health of a Chainweb Node
• Mining for a Chainweb Network
• Chainweb Design
  • Component Structure Details
  • Architecture Overview

Docs

The Kadena Docs site, which can be found here serves as a source of information about Kadena. You can find information about how to interact with the public chain, including how to get keys, view network activity, explore blocks, etc. here.

If you have additions or comments, please submit a pull request or raise an issue - the GitHub project can be found here

Installing Chainweb

Linux Users

The binaries can be found here.

Apt-based distributions

If you are on Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS or any other Apt-based distribution, you will need to install rocksdb with the following command:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install -y librocksdb-dev zlib1g-dev libtinfo-dev libsqlite3-dev libz3-dev z3

If this is not available, then please view the Rocksdb site for alternative modes of installation.

Other distributions

For all other distributions not using Apt (RHEL, Gentoo, Arch, etc), please consult your distro's repositories for librocksdb5.8, tinfo, zlib, z3 and install with its preferred package manager, or follow the alternative modes of installation described in Rocksdb.

At this point, you are ready to run a Chainweb node

Mac Users

Getting the Dependencies

Using the brew package manager, issue the following commands to download Chainweb's dependencies

brew update
brew install z3
brew install sqlite
brew install rocksdb

Building from Source

Chainweb is a Haskell project, and can be built in several ways.

Getting the Code

Dependencies

• Homebrew: brew install git
• Installer

To get the code, you can go here

You have the code, now let's pick a build tool.

Building with Nix

The fastest way to build and run chainweb is to use the Nix package manager which has binary caching capabilities that allow you to download pre-built binaries for everything needed by Chainweb. For detailed instructions see our wiki.

When the build is finished, you can run chainweb with the following command:

./result/ghc/chainweb/bin/chainweb-node

Building with Stack

Dependencies

• stack >= 1.9
  • Mac (Homebrew): brew install haskell-stack
  • General Linux / Mac

(You may also need to install zlib, openssl, and sqlite.)

Stack is a Haskell build tool that manages compiler and dependency versions for you. It's easy to install and use.

To build a chainweb-node binary:

stack build

This will compile a runnable version of chainweb-node, which you can run via:

stack exec -- chainweb-node

Alternatively, stack install will install the binary to ~/.local/bin/, which you may need to add to your path. Then, you can call chainweb-node as-is.

Building with Cabal

Dependencies

• ghc >= 8.4 (Haskell compiler) and cabal >= 2.2 (Haskell build-tool)
  • Linux / Mac

(You may also need to install zlib, openssl, and sqlite.)

Cabal is the original build tool for Haskell. You will need a version of GHC installed on your machine to use it.

To build a chainweb-node binary:

# Only necessary if you haven't done this recently.
cabal new-update

# Build the project.
cabal new-build

To install a runnable binary to ~/.cabal/bin/:

cabal new-install

Bootstrap Nodes

Testnet Nodes

• us1.testnet.chainweb.com
• us2.testnet.chainweb.com
• eu1.testnet.chainweb.com
• eu2.testnet.chainweb.com
• ap1.testnet.chainweb.com
• ap2.testnet.chainweb.com

Mainnet Nodes

All bootstrap nodes are running on port 443.

• us-e1.chainweb.com
• us-e2.chainweb.com
• us-e3.chainweb.com
• us-w1.chainweb.com
• us-w2.chainweb.com
• us-w3.chainweb.com
• jp1.chainweb.com
• jp2.chainweb.com
• jp3.chainweb.com
• fr1.chainweb.com
• fr2.chainweb.com
• fr3.chainweb.com

Configuring, running, and monitoring the health of a Chainweb Node

This section assumes you've installed the chainweb-node binary somewhere sensible, or otherwise have a simple way to refer to it.

To configure your node, please use our minimal node configuration. You need to update only one section, hostaddress:

hostaddress:
  hostname: your-public-ip-or-domain
  port: 443

Note: You will have to perform Port Forwarding if your machine is behind a router.

Then, to run your node:

chainweb-node --config-file=minimal-config.yaml

Monitoring the health of a Chainweb Node

The following outlines how you can check that your chainweb-node is healthy

chainweb-node should be running from the public IP address and a port that is open to the other chainweb nodes.

If you're behind a NAT, it is VERY IMPORTANT that your network allows external nodes to connect to the node you are running. If you provide us with your ip address and port number in our Discord mining channel, we can verify whether your node is reachable to the rest of the network.

When running the chainweb-node binary, you can indicate your hostname and port number directly in the config-file, or you can set it via command line flags like such:

$ chainweb-node --config-file <path-to-config-file> --hostname <public-ip> --port <port> --log-level <desired-log-level>

Once you're node is running, go through the following checks to verify that you have a healthy node:

• run the command in your terminal:

$ curl -sk "https://<public-ip>:<port>/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/cut"

• navigate to this website on your browser: https://yourPublicIp:port/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/cut
• check logs for whether services are started
• check if the node is receiving cuts
• look for errors in the logs
• look for warnings in the logs

Usually, when a node is receiving and publishing cuts (i.e. block heights at every chain), it's working correctly.

The /cut endpoint will return the latest cut that your node has. It's possible that your node is falling behind, so make sure to compare its cut height with the cut heights of the bootstrap nodes. It's also possible that you are mining to a node that is catching up to the rest of the network. Before you start mining to a node, you SHOULD verify that this node has the most up-to-date cut.

You can get the cut height of any node by running the following:

$ curl -sk https://<bootstrap-node-url>/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/cut | jq '.height'

Miscellaneous

To find your public ip:

$ curl 'https://api.ipify.org?format=text'

Mine for a Chainweb Network

Detailed mining instructions can be found in our Mining Guide.

Chainweb Design

Component Structure

The production components are:

• chainweb library: It provides the implementation for the different components of a chainweb-node.

• chainweb-node: An application that runs a Chainweb node. It maintains copies of a number of chains from a given Chainweb instance. It provides interfaces (command-line and RPC) for directly interacting with the Chainweb or for implementing applications such as miners and transaction management tools.

• chainweb-miner: A stand-alone Mining Client.

• chainweb-tests: A test suite for the Chainweb library and chainweb-node.

Architecture Overview

For a detailed description of the Kadena architecture, see here.