How to create your own Nine Chronicles genesis block

Docs Tutorial
,
1

1. Summary

Genesis block is the very first block of a blockchain network and an identity of blockchain network.
Blockchain nodes only who shares same genesis block can communicate each other without any problem.
So you can make your own Nine Chronicles blockchain network creating genesis block.
You can use this genesis block from local test to run private server of Nine Chronicles.

1.1. Expected Result

After reading this article, you will get your own Nine Chronicles genesis block and running node based on that genesis block.

2. How to create genesis block

2.1. Preparation

2.1.1. Install .NET SDK

Nine Chronicles is developed with C# as a main language, so you have to install .NET SDK to create
Visit Microsoft documentation and install .NET SDK 6 following instruction.
You can check installed .NET SDK versions using this command:

dotnet --list-sdks

Make sure 6.X.YYY version is listed.

2.1.2. Prepare Repository

Clone repository with submodules with following commands:

git clone https://github.com/planetarium/NineChronicles.Headless.git
cd NineChronicles.Headless
git submodule update --init --recursive

The last command is required to set up all submodules related codes to build headless server.

2.1.3. Remark

You may meet an error about .NET version to use .NET Core 3.1.
In this case, just install .NET Core 3.1 besides .NET 6.0. They can be installed and work at the same time.
If you’re running later version of linux e.g. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

2.2. (Optional) Create activation keys and PendingActivationState

Activation key is the kind of invitation code for new Nine Chronicles account(0x123abc...) to register/activate into Nine Chronicles.
You can create activation key whenever you want later, so you can just skip this step.

dotnet run --project ./Lic9c/.Lib9c.Tools tx create-activation-keys 10 > ActivationKeys.csv  # Change [10] to your number of new activation keys
dotnet run --project ./Lib9c/.Lib9c.Tools tx create-pending-activations ActivationKeys.csv > PendingActivation

2.3. Create config file for genesis block

  1. Copy config.json.example to config.json
  2. Change values inside config.json
    • data.tablePath is required.
    • If you have PendingActivation file, set file path to extra.pendingActivationStatePath

If you skipped step 2.2 so you don’t need to set PendingActivationState, you should delete extra.pendingActivationStatePath to skip this step when mining genesis block.

The full structure of config.json can be found in README.md.

2.4. Create genesis block

Now you can create your own genesis block for Nine Chronicles.

dotnet run --project ./NineChronicles.Headless.Executable/ genesis ./config.json

After this step, you will get genesis-block file as output and another info in addition.

2.5. (Test) Run Nine Chronicles Headless node with new genesis block

dotnet run --project ./NineChronicles.Headless.Executable/ \
    -V=100260/6ec8E598962F1f475504F82fD5bF3410eAE58B9B/MEUCIQCG2yQNyXu3ovuUBNMEQiqx1vdo.FCMet9FoayFiIL89QIgXGRTU84nrcmLL4ud2j9ogrGt7ScmqaD97N.4rrtraXE=/ZHUxNjpXaW5kb3dzQmluYXJ5VXJsdTU2Omh0dHBzOi8vZG93bmxvYWQubmluZS1jaHJvbmljbGVzLmNvbS92MTAwMjYwL1dpbmRvd3MuemlwdTk6dGltZXN0YW1wdTEwOjIwMjItMDctMjhl \ 
    -G=[PATH/TO/GENESIS/BLOCK] \
    --store-type=rocksdb \
    --store-path= [PATH/TO/BLOCK/STORAGE] \
    --workers=1000 \
    --host=localhost \
    --port=43210 \
    --miner-private-key=[PRIVATE_KEY_OF_BLOCK_MINER]

The [PRIVATE_KEY_OF_BLOCK_MINER] is a private key for Nine Chronicles.
You can create a key easily using planet command. Please read this article.
If you see log like this, all process is successfully done:

Start mining.
[BlockChain] 424037645/18484: Starting to mine block #1 with difficulty 5000000 and previous hash 29f53d22...
[BlockChain] Gathering transactions to mine for block #1 from 0 staged transactions...
[BlockChain] Gathered total of 0 transactions to mine for block #1 from 0 staged transactions.
Evaluating actions in the block #1 pre-evaluation hash: 10d93de7...
Evaluating policy block action for block #1 System.Collections.Immutable.ImmutableArray`1[System.Byte]
Actions in 0 transactions for block #1 pre-evaluation hash: 10d93de7... evaluated in 20ms.
[BlockChain] 424037645/18484: Mined block #1 0838b084... with difficulty 5000000 and previous hash 29f53d22...
[BlockChain] Trying to append block #1 0838b084...
[BlockChain] Unstaging 0 transactions from block #1 0838b084...
[BlockChain] Unstaged 0 transactions from block #1 0838b084...
[Swarm] Trying to broadcast blocks...
[NetMQTransport] Broadcasting message Libplanet.Net.Messages.BlockHeaderMessage as 0x7862DD9b....Unspecified/localhost:43210. to 0 peers
[Swarm] Block broadcasting complete.
[BlockChain] Appended the block #1 0838b084...
[BlockChain] Invoking renderers for #1 0838b084... (1 renderer(s), 0 action renderer(s))
[LoggedRenderer] Invoking RenderBlock() for #1 0838b084... (was #0 29f53d22...)...
[LoggedRenderer] Invoked RenderBlock() for #1 0838b084... (was #0 29f53d22...).
[BlockChain] Invoked renderers for #1 0838b084... (1 renderer(s), 0 action renderer(s))
[Swarm] Trying to broadcast blocks...
[NetMQTransport] Broadcasting message Libplanet.Net.Messages.BlockHeaderMessage as 0x7862DD9b....Unspecified/localhost:43210. to 0 peers
[Swarm] Block broadcasting complete.

You can see the blocks are mining as time goes by, and now you made your own Nine Chronicles blockchain network.
Congratulations!

2.5.1. Troubleshooting

  1. libdl not found issue
    If you’re running later version of linux, you may encounter error like this:
    librocksdb-6.4.so: (DllNotFoundException) Unable to load shared library 'libdl' or one of its dependencies. In order to help diagnose loading problems, consider setting the LD_DEBUG environment variable: liblibdl: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    This is because later version of libc(>=2.35), libdl.so is embedded into standard C library.
    To resolve this, just symlink newer version of libdl to older name like this:
    whereis libdl.so.2
libdl.so.2: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 # This result is an example. Please use your output
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2
    After this, run headless server again and the server may run.

    Reference from StackExchange

References

  • README.md in Nine Chronicles Headless server repository
2

if there is no PendingActivation file and you don’t want to use it, you also need to delete extra.pendingActivationStatePath section.

1 Like
3

@hyeon I think it would be nice if there is an instruction (or just mention or link for other docs) about how to create a private key for miners here.

1 Like