Grant: Node Pilot (1-click deployment and validation)

The conversation here interestingly shifted towards validator role quite a bit. In looking closer at the proposal, I believe the proposal is NOT for running validators.

It’s to operate a non-validating full node using a 1-click approach, and yet be able to earn POKT rewards for serving RPC traffic.

I believe that’s the primary purpose behind this. Making it a validator node becomes secondary. Having validator node running experiences will help though.

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Ah, ok.

IMHO Validator creation could work with docker.
It could be docker-compose.yml project description opensourced, located and managed in Github.

But all sensitive info ( BLS keys, BLS Keys passwords, Validator’s Wallet) should remain in control of node operator. this files could be just Mounted to the docker container to appropriate folders, from local Node folders… That are located there by owner itself after git clone of Docker project.

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This proposal is bascially running on a Docker node. I half built it earlier in the year but then with EasyNode it seemed less likely… Plus Docker adds extra complexity that I don’t believe is required and of course extra maintenance, support etc.

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Ah, ok, sure. If we will skip Validator Node creation part here, team would benefit from such automation for sure.

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Maybe @shane can update the proposal to reflect that as that indeed could prove useful but at present the objectives encompasses all node setups.

  • Harmony Validators can “double dip” in the native ONE rewards and Pocket rewards.

Maybe there is some misalignment here.

Or maybe split the proposal into 2 if there is scope for both.

Auto POKT / Harmony Full Node RPC would be good as I know there has been some technical barriers for setting up properly.

For those who this may apply to, Happy Thanksgiving!

Don’t have much time today but I wanted to quickly jump this growing discussion.

[Disclaimer - I LOVE GUIs and LOVE Docker] :wink:

Really impressive products. I’ll dive into them deeper a bit later, but the documentation is very impressive.

Yes. NP is intentionally designed to allow nodes to be portable. You can easily move a validator that was started in NP to your own Docker instance. There is zero platform lock-in and our deployment engine ensures everything is transparent. Our file structure and configs are easily understandable and designed for portability.

We do not manage the relationship between delegators and validators. Delegators should choose wisely who they want to delegate with… we have no involvement. We just make tools that streamlines how node runners can deploy and interface with their validator, but the responsibility of being a good validator to their delegators is still their responsibility.

What I have seen in most networks is eventually the majority of validators are run by custodial services. There are always a portion that are independent node runners, but most networks have the majority of validators centralized into only a few providers. The worry is then “well how do we break up the providers?”. By then you are most likely too late.

Node Launcher is ultimately the middle ground, because it enables anyone to make validator deployment applications seamlessly through JS. Node Pilot acts as the first use-case of it, but we ultimately want others to build their own and democratize node running with many options.

Yeah, that is the risk with custodial services. NP is self-hosting, the polar opposite.

We plan to do with Harmony what we’ve already proven with POKT. Once you deploy a POKT node and you have met the threshold to be a validator (have enough POKT, connected chains, etc) then we have a “Stake Validate” which does the validator process automatically once clicked. We are planning to have the same UX for Harmony validators.

I may have under-represented Node Launcher and its importance in all of this. Node Launcher is the secret sauce and the real tech we are pushing… as it enables programmatic deployment/management of Harmony containers through JS. We originally launched NP back in April where we did just hard-code docker files for nodes. We quickly realized once we started stacking different types of nodes that we wanted to standardize how nodes can be deployed and updated. So instead of managing hard-coded docker files, we have a programmatic platform that we just add integrations into.

I’d encourage the more tech-inclined to check out the Github for Node Launcher and perhaps our 7min introduction video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Lm0iShA0I

Feel free to check out the documentation for deploying a POKT node the traditional way. For the IT inclined, it’s absolutely doable without NP, but the Pocket community kicked off this project because custodial service providers were becoming the norm and majority of the network.

I may have missed some important points, but I tried to get in as many comments from as many individuals as I could before focusing on the holiday. Feel free to keep the convo going and high-light areas I can provide better clarity :+1:

:turkey:

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One more point I missed: This expands what kind of applications can be built for nodes and validators. Others could take Node Launcher and build a Harmony branded application that functions similar to Node Pilot. Or an existing application, say a wallet, could add validator abilities with a few lines of JS code. The more tools for the community/ecosystem the better IMO.

Harmony will probably also have other community-driven services that will likely rise up and require some kind of node. Like with other platforms, common examples are decentralized bridges or privacy relay networks. On other networks, those are complex deployments going the traditional route, but they can be standardized and launchable with Node Launcher, making any app with Node Launcher able to easy add new services. If it’s added to NL, then it will also be compatible with NP and any others.

Through our experience with trying to develop NP, we think a standardized, programmatic deployment platform will scale and generate more adoption than standard docker file setups. We may be the crazy ones though :joy:

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Thank you for taking the time for a detailed reply… I have checked out the github and like the transparency.

I will hopefully have a deeper look over the next few days and I wish you happy holidays :slight_smile:

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Thank you for taking the time.

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Great set of discussions here. Fits the bounty category in Apply for Grants or DAO

:tada: Approved for the $30K to build initial integrations and docs, and $21.5K to operate validators in multiple shards for 18 months with testing, maintenance and support.

Really looking forward to seeing this go live and be in the hands of new and existing node runners!

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We very excited to make this happen!! Q1 for node runners is going to be :fire:

We will keep folks updated as things progress. In a few days we are releasing one of our most feature rich updates yet for Node Launcher and Node Pilot, most notably enabling a new way to seamlessly update. Things are moving fast and are excited to dig into Harmony :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi,

In order to know account balance in older blocks I need to have access to an archieval or explorer node.
(Validators nodes has not this info)

So, I am not interesting in deploy one by myself, but I am wondering if you offer a way to have access to one explorer node to send a few queries.

Thanks :slight_smile:

POKT plans to add archival access, so that will be an option in the future.

Node Launcher could be used by other to setup new node services, but we do not provide RPC services.

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NODE PILOT UPDATE

Hey everyone, I wanted to drop an update on our progress. It’s been a while, but we ended up needing to do a substantial code refactor through most of 2022 to enable Node Pilot/Node Launcher to grow into the feature focused platform we envision.

We’ve made a quick update video on all that has been going on since our proposal was approved. Check it out!

(Node Pilot Update on Harmony Validation - YouTube)

TLDR

  1. Regular Harmony nodes were added to Node Pilot early this year and has been heavily used in the Pocket Network to serve Harmony DApps.
  2. Node Pilot/Node Launcher underwent major refactoring this year, now completing our Validation API and Enterprise API.
  3. Harmony Validation in now live in the harmony_validator branch in Github!

We have done 90% of the development, equaling 75% of the total work for this proposal, and need to start collecting on this proposal to bring it over the finish line. We started testing Harmony Validators on Harmony’s devnet in August, and are ready to bring it to mainnet with tokens for QAing.

Thanks for supporting this work and we are excited to make Harmony one of the first validators to be added (after our original integration with POKT in 2021). If folks have any questions, feel free to drop them below :slightly_smiling_face:

P.S. I’ll be traveling Colombia to speak at DevCon on Friday, so my comms ability will be limited until next Monday, but I’ll do the best I can!

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I think I understand this. I like this Idea is there literature for this ?

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Just watched Video, so next step is you just need Delegation ???

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Back in the office after my trip to Colombia for DevCon :slightly_smiling_face:

Yes, you can check out our website and docs. We will also make a video tutorial once the integration is ready for mainnet.

Next step for us after sharing and update is to collect on the $30k ONE tokens which reimburse for all the work we have done so far, and fund the final phase. We also need the $21,500 ONE tokens which will be used for mainnet Validator testing. We have not collected any ONE tokens yet, which we need to start doing to proceed forward.

I honestly don’t know whether harmony is paying out , How ever maybe we can get a community help out with this if we can get these nodes online we can create more Reppegin nodes like Repegging node to help out with Repegging all assets. Or maybe we can get recovery one to assist with this this ? This sounds like a great project. Almost like a validating for Dummies type thing.

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I believe new proposals are not being accepted, but existing proposal that were approved by the DAO would be honored. If that has changed, there hasn’t been any announcement I’m aware of.

Happy to consider Repegging nodes. Where is the best place to learn about them? Is there documentation?

That’s exactly it :wink:

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Yes let’s see if we can get you into contact with R1 and repegging nodes. What are you handles for social media?