Run a witness node

Set up a machine

To reliably run a witness node, you need to set up a machine in a cloud environment or a local data center. For optimal performance, the machine should meet the following minimum hardware specifications:

8-core CPU
32GB of RAM
2TB SSD
Network capacity of 100MB for inbound and outbound traffic

Nodes that do not meet these minimum requirements may experience reduced performance in block sealing, which could result in a lower reward for serving as a witness. The operation system of the machine could be either Linux or Windows.

Build OORT node

Download the source code from Oort Olympus GitHub repository and follow the instructions in the README to build the node. Once built, the compiled executable, mcp, will be located in the build folder. You can move mcp to any directory where you want the executable to reside.

If you are running the node on Linux, you can alternatively download the pre-compiled mcp executable from Oort Olympus Releases.

Create a witness account and export the keystore file

Step 1: Create a normal account in Ale wallet

Step 2: Export the account into a keystore file. You should specify a password for the file when you exporting it.

Step 3: Copy the content of the keystore and save it to keystore.json file.

Run the node as a witness

Step 1: Copy the saved keystore.json to the node machine.

Step 2: Identify a folder that will be set as the <Your data path> to store the configuration and local data of the node.

Step 3: Import the keystore file by running ./mcp --data_path=<Your data path> --account_import --file=<Your keystore file>

Step 4: Modify config.json file in <Your data path>. Under the witness tag, set witness to be true, and witness_account set to be <Your witness account address> that was just created in Ale wallet. Leave the password field be empty.

Step 5: Run ./mcp --daemon --data_path=<Your data path> It will be prompted asking for the password of the witness, which is the password of the keystore file. Step 6: To keep run the mcp in the background even when the terminal is killed. First, press CTRL+D.Then, type bg %1 and then disown %1 in then terminal.