Filecoin

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Consensus chain

This chain is verified by Axelar validators. Before setting up this node, set up your Axelar validator. Once the node is running, connect it to vald as described in Verify consensus chains.

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Check the official documentation

The node setup steps below follow Filecoin's own documentation at the time of writing and may be out of date. Check the official documentation before you start. The Axelar-specific steps (connecting the node to vald or ampd) are maintained here.

Set up your Filecoin Mainnet or Testnet Hyperspace node.

Prerequisites

Setup your Axelar validator
Minimum hardware requirements: 8-core CPU and 32 GiB RAM. Models with support for Intel SHA Extensions (AMD Zen or Intel Ice Lake or newer) will significantly speed things up.
MacOS or Linux
Build-essential packages
Golang
Official Documentation Testnet Hyperspace
Official Documentation

Install required dependencies

In order to build lotus, you first need to install all of the required dependencies.

1. Build lotus from source

You can view the official documentation for details on how to build lotus from source here. Instructions below are for Ubuntu.

Install dependencies

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mesa-opencl-icd ocl-icd-opencl-dev gcc git bzr jq pkg-config curl clang build-essential hwloc libhwloc-dev wget aria2 -y && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install Rustup

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Install Golang

You must compile the lotus daemon with the required Go version.

wget -c https://golang.org/dl/go1.19.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz -O - | sudo tar -xz -C /usr/local
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc

Clone the lotus repository

git clone https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus.git
cd lotus/

If you have an AMD Zen or Intel Ice Lake CPU (i.e 10th gen Intel Core/3rd gen Xeon) or newer, enable FFI optimizations by setting the env vars below.

export RUSTFLAGS="-C target-cpu=native -g"
export FFI_BUILD_FROM_SOURCE=1

Checkout the correct release and build the daemon.

git checkout releases;
make clean all;
sudo make install

git checkout v1.20.3-hyperspace-nv21-rpc-p01;
make clean hyperspacenet;
sudo make install

2. Starting the Daemon

For systemd service files, the makefile provides a template that can be installed.

Download the latest pruned snapshot.

aria2c -x5 https://forest-archive.chainsafe.dev/latest/mainnet/

aria2c -x5 https://forest-archive.chainsafe.dev/latest/calibnet/

Import the snapshot

lotus daemon --import-snapshot path/to/snapshot.car.zst --halt-after-import

Modify the lotus config file ~/.lotus/config.toml. First, enable the Eth RPC needed by vald. Also set the P2P configuration to use a static port with your public IP.

[Fevm]
  # EnableEthRPC enables eth_rpc, and enables storing a mapping of eth transaction hashes to filecoin message Cids.
  # This will also enable the RealTimeFilterAPI and HistoricFilterAPI by default, but they can be disabled by config options above.
  #
  # type: bool
  # env var: LOTUS_FEVM_ENABLEETHRPC
  EnableEthRPC = true

[Libp2p]
  ListenAddresses = ["/ip4/<your-public-ip>/tcp/<port-with-firewall-allow>"] # e.g ["/ip4/1.1.1.1/tcp/9876"]
  AnnounceAddresses = ["/ip4/<your-public-ip>/tcp/<port-with-firewall-allow>"]
  ConnMgrLow = 50
  ConnMgrHigh = 100
  ConnMgrGrace = "20s"

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Forest Chain Indexer

Forest’s chain indexer is disabled by default, which causes EVM RPC methods like eth_getTransactionReceipt to return errors (indexer disabled). Vald relies on indexed receipts to see vote transactions. To enable:

export FOREST_CHAIN_INDEXER_ENABLED = true

You also need to enable the SplitStore feature to reduce disk usage. You can read more on this here. ColdStoreType needs to be set to messages to allow querying FEVM transactions.

[Chainstore]
  # type: bool
  # env var: LOTUS_CHAINSTORE_ENABLESPLITSTORE
  EnableSplitstore = true

[Chainstore.Splitstore]
  # ColdStoreType specifies the type of the coldstore.
  # It can be "messages" (default) to store only messages, "universal" to store all chain state or "discard" for discarding cold blocks.
  #
  # type: string
  # env var: LOTUS_CHAINSTORE_SPLITSTORE_COLDSTORETYPE
  ColdStoreType = "messages"

For systemd service files, the makefile provides a template that can be installed.

make install-daemon-service

In the generated systemd file /etc/systemd/system/lotus-daemon.service, under [Service], set the LOTUS_PATH env variable to the config folder (e.g. /home/ubuntu/.lotus).

[Service]
Environment=LOTUS_PATH="/path/to/.lotus"
MemoryAccounting=true  # Optimize disk usage

Start the daemon

sudo systemctl start lotus-daemon

Tail the logs to see if the daemon is syncing

tail -F /var/log/lotus/daemon.log

You should eventually (approx 5-10 minutes) see syncing messages in the logs:

{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.455Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.030020629,"height":"2301","age":6221912.455308664}
{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.487Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.029449958,"height":"2302","age":6221882.487074932}
{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.488Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.031201571,"height":"2302","age":6221882.488814413}
{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.519Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.02858384,"height":"2303","age":6221852.519261811}
{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.520Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.030298414,"height":"2303","age":6221852.520997515}
{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.550Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.027933658,"height":"2304","age":6221822.550828792}
{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.552Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.029913401,"height":"2304","age":6221822.552771758}
{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.583Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.028520766,"height":"2305","age":6221792.583270292}
{"level":"info","ts":"2023-03-30T01:29:02.585Z","logger":"chain","caller":"chain/sync.go:625","msg":"block validation","took":0.030328811,"height":"2305","age":6221792.585082853}

You can also run the following command to wait on the status of your node, you will have to wait a few minutes before this command runs:

lotus sync wait

3. Test your Filecoin RPC connection

Once the node is running you can test the RPC.

curl -X POST 'http://localhost:1234/rpc/v1' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"Filecoin.ChainHead","params":[]}' \
  | jq

Once your node is fully synced, query the latest block number using the following EVM query:

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:1234/rpc/v1' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
  "jsonrpc":"2.0",
  "method":"eth_blockNumber",
  "params":[],
  "id":1
}' | jq

Verify that the block number matches the latest block number on the explorer.

Mainnet Explorer

Testnet Explorer

Configure vald

In order for vald to connect to your Filecoin node, your rpc_addr should be exposed in vald's config.toml

[[axelar_bridge_evm]]
name = "filecoin"
rpc_addr = "http://localhost:1234/rpc/v1"
start-with-bridge = true

[[axelar_bridge_evm]]
name = "filecoin"
rpc_addr = "http://localhost:1234/rpc/v1"
start-with-bridge = true