Setting up a Stacks Node

Table of Contents

• Setting up a Stacks Node
  • Stacks Node System Requirements
  • Downloading the Release
  • Testing the Release
• Mining with a Stacks Node
  • Stacks Node Configuration File
  • Starting Stacks Node as a Miner
• Other Resources

Setting up a Stacks Node

Stacks Node System Requirements

The official Stacks Documentation states:

Running a node has no specialized hardware requirements. People were successful at running a node on Raspberry Pis, for instance. Minimum requirements are moving targets due to the nature of the project and some factors should be considered:

• compiling node sources locally requires computing and storage resources
• as the chain grows, the on-disk state will grow over time

We suggest hardware based on a general-purpose specification, similarly to GCP E2 machine standard 2 or AWS EC2 t3.large standard:

• 2 vCPUs
• 8 GB memory
• ~50-GB disk (preferably SSDs)

It is also recommended to run the node with a publicly routable IP, that way other peers in the network will be able to connect to it.

Stacks Documentation: Running a mainnet node

Downloading the Release

Stacks mining is currently available using the stacks-node executable from the stacks-blockchain repo.

There are two ways to obtain the software.

1. Download the latest release from GitHub , which contains a ready-to-run program for your operating system.
2. Build the code directly from GitHub, which requires more prerequisites but gives access to the latest fixes.

Option 1 is the fastest way to get things running, and preferable if you do not have experience with compiling software.

Option 2 is more advanced, requiring Rust, Git, and the correct build tools for your OS.

For this tutorial, we will focus on Option 1 for simplicity.

Once downloaded, the software must be extracted from the zip file into a folder, and the location of that folder must be used when running commands.

For example, on Linux:

unzip linux-x64.zip
cd linux-x64
./stacks-node mainnet

For example, on Windows:

• right click and extract the file to a folder
• open the command prompt (cmd)
• navigate to the directory with that folder

cd %userprofile%\Downloads\windows-x64
stacks-node.exe mainnet

Testing the Release

The best way to test that the software is working before starting to mine is to start the node as a follower and check the output.

The examples above use stacks-node mainnet to start the node, which automatically starts as a follower attached to the Stacks 2.0 mainnet.

If you see output similar to the text below, then you are ready to move on to setting up a miner.

INFO [1609701802.653224] [testnet/stacks-node/src/run_loop/neon.rs:132] [ThreadId(1)] Follower node: starting up

Mining with a Stacks Node

To convert the follower into a miner, we have to use a TOML formatted configuration file with the settings both for our local bitcoind node and our stacks keychain.

Stacks Node Configuration File

A default configuration file for stacks-node is below, copy and paste this into a text editor and save it as mainnet-miner.conf in the same folder as stacks-node from the steps above.

[node]
rpc_bind = "0.0.0.0:20443"
p2p_bind = "0.0.0.0:20444"
seed = "your-private-key-seed"
local_peer_seed = "your-private-key-seed"
miner = true
# uncomment to mine microblocks
# mine_microblocks = true
# uncomment to change wait time for microblocks
# wait_time_for_microblocks = 30000
bootstrap_node = "02da7a464ac770ae8337a343670778b93410f2f3fef6bea98dd1c3e9224459d36b@seed-0.mainnet.stacks.co:20444,02afeae522aab5f8c99a00ddf75fbcb4a641e052dd48836408d9cf437344b63516@seed-1.mainnet.stacks.co:20444,03652212ea76be0ed4cd83a25c06e57819993029a7b9999f7d63c36340b34a4e62@seed-2.mainnet.stacks.co:20444"
# uncomment working_dir line below to change the directory
# where the stacks blockchain data is stored.
# NOTE: if this gets corrupted, your node will not start
# working_dir = "/home/username/stacks-blockchain-data"

[burnchain]
chain = "bitcoin"
mode = "mainnet"
peer_host = "127.0.0.1"
rpc_port = 8332
peer_port = 8333
username = "your-bitcoind-username"
password = "your-bitcoind-password"
# NOTE: adjust values below based on your strategy
satoshis_per_byte = 100
burn_fee_cap = 20000

A full reference for the stacks node configuration file can be found as part of the official Stacks documentation.

Starting Stacks Node as a Miner

In order to use the configuration file created in the last step, you have to run stacks-node with a slightly different command:

stacks-node start --config=mainnet-miner.conf

If you see output similar to the text below, then your miner is starting up and running correctly!

INFO [1609703751.604620] [testnet/stacks-node/src/run_loop/neon.rs:121] [ThreadId(1)] Miner node: checking UTXOs at address: your-btc-address
INFO [1609703751.680088] [testnet/stacks-node/src/run_loop/neon.rs:128] [ThreadId(1)] Miner node: starting up, UTXOs found.

Other Resources