Cardano Stake Pool Ops

This project aims to be the most simple way to set up a Cardano Stake Pool (Block Producer & Relay nodes) inside a secure, highly-available, and fault-tolerant AWS cloud network. It implements an easily configurable, yet a well-opinionated approach, based on some of the best practices found inside the community. Soon, we intend on providing the script for other cloud providers & custom environments.

🐋 Features

Installs latest cardano-node v1.30.1
Secure by default
Most simple AWS setup with 1 Core & 2 Relay nodes
Automatic alarms & notifications for CPU, RAM and storage alerts
Useful management tools & beautiful graphs

Thanks to the Guild Operators who have created some great tooling for Stake Pool Operators (SPO).

Our managed pools offer not only a "High Pledge" but also provide a lot of utility & rewards for simply being a member. Feel free to reach out! We would love to get to know you.

Prerequisite

This guide assumes that you have aws-cli set up locally. It's an incredibly simple process and well-explained within the official documentation that can be found here.

Once you have the AWS CLI installed on your machine, run the following command to get authenticated:

aws configure

# next, let's install the `serverless`-CLI tool & authenticate it
npm install -g serverless
serverless

Serverless is an amazing tool that automates the setup of our AWS account. It is important to note that while you configure your AWS account, you need to select a region that, at minimum, offers 3 Availability Zones, like us-east-1. View the regions you may select here.

Get Started

# 1. let's create a .env file and make sure to set all variables as appropriate
cp .env.example .env

# 2. now, we need to create a SSH key pair that can authenticate our device securely with AWS
./scripts/generate_ssh_key_pair.sh

# 3. next, let's create your Stake Pool environment including 1x Block Producer node & 2x Relay nodes
npm run build:stake-pool # this will take ~3 hours for `testnet` nodes & ~8 hours for `mainnet` nodes

## during this process, you will receive 2 emails asking to confirm a "subscription" which is required in order for you to receive "system alerts"

# 4. you can now securely SSH into your Cardano node (navigate to AWS EC2 to figure out the host and use the port defined in .env)
ssh -i "cardano-stake-pool.pem" ubuntu@ec2-12-68-116-220.compute-1.amazonaws.com -p 22

# 5. at this point, we assume the node is in sync with the blockchain which then allows us to create the block producer node keys and certificate.
./scripts/generate_block_producer_keys.sh # please only run this command on your core node & read the comments for details

🐙 Useful commands

## "Cardano Node"-specific commands
start # starts the "Block Producer" or a "Relay" node
restart # restarts the node service
stop # stops the node service
status # view the status of your node
update # alpha: updates the node

## viewing & filtering logs
logs
logsToday
logsYesterday
journalctl --unit=cnode --since='2021-09-01 00:00:00' --until='2021-09-30 12:00:00'
logMonitor # monitors the Cardano Node log
creationLogMonitor # monitors the log output of the "User Data" script (mostly the `build_node.sh` log output)

## other useful commands
gLiveView
systemInfo # displays system info about your server

## please beware, this will delete your AWS stake pool resources
npm run cleanup # cleans all environments
npm run cleanup:guild
npm run cleanup:testnet
npm run cleanup:mainnet

Important notes

In mainnet, you will need to regenerate the KES key every 90 days (use our provided script - will be automated in future release)
Cold Keys must be generated and stored on your air-gapped offline machine
Exercise plenty in a "test network" before operating a mainnet node

You may also want to check out the aliases-file for some helpful shortcuts.

📈 Changelog

Please see our releases page for more information on what has changed recently.

💪🏼 Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

One important command oftentimes used when debugging is:

tail -f /var/log/cloud-init-output.log # alias `monitorNodeCreationLogs`

This command will log the "user data" script that builds the AWS Ubuntu server.

🏝 Community

For help, discussion about best practices, or any other conversation that would benefit from being searchable:

Stake Pool Discussion on GitHub

For casual chit-chat with others using this package:

Join the Stake Pool Discord Server

🚨 Security

Please review our security policy on how to report security vulnerabilities.

🙏🏼 Credits

📄 License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see LICENSE for more information.

Made with ❤️ by Meema, Inc.