NKN: a Scalable Self-Evolving and Self-Incentivized Decentralized Network
NKN, short for New Kind of Network, is a project aiming to rebuild the
Internet that will be truly open, decentralized, dynamic, safe, shared and
owned by the community.
Official website: https://nkn.org/
Introduction
The core of the NKN network consists of many connected nodes distributed
globally. Every node is only connected to and aware of a few other nodes called
neighbors. Packets can be transmitted from any node to any other node in an
efficient and verifiable route. Data can be sent to any clients without public
or static IP address using their permanent NKN address with end-to-end
encryption.
The relay workload can be verified using our Proof of Relay (PoR) algorithm. A
small and fixed portion of the packets will be randomly selected as proof. The
random selection can be verified and cannot be predicted or controlled. Proof
will be sent to other nodes for payment and rewards.
A node in our network is both relayer and consensus participant. Consensus among
massive nodes can be reached efficiently by only communicating with neighbors
using our consensus algorithm based on Cellular Automata. Consensus is reached
for every block to prevent fork.
More details can be found in our wiki.
Technical Highlights
Deployment
Note: this repository is in the early development stage and may not
have all functions working properly. It should be used only for testing
now.
Q: I want to run this node, but have no idea about programming or temrinal.
What should I do?
A: Easiest for you will be to follow docker instructions below. Docker will take care of quite a lot of things for you.
If you are asked to run or issue command (usually formatted like this:)
cd change/active/directory/to/this/one
open a terminal (or cmd on windows - start -> run/search -> cmd.exe) and write the command there.
Building from source
To build from source, you need a properly configured Go environment (Go 1.8+,
$GOROOT and $GOPATH set up, see Go Official Installation
Documentation for more details).
Create directory $GOPATH/src/github.com/nknorg/ if not exists
In directory $GOPATH/src/github.com/nknorg/ clone the repository
$ git clone https://github.com/nknorg/nkn.git
Install package management tool glide
if it's not installed on your system.
$ cd nkn
$ make glide
Download dependencies for building
$ make vendor
Build the source code with make
$ make build_local
After building is successful, you should see two executables:
nknd
: the nkn node programnknc
: command line tool for nkn node control
NOTE: To build binaries for other architectures execute make all
. The resulting binaries are stored in build
directory.
Building using docker
Prerequirement: Have working docker software installed. For help with that
visit official docker docs
Build and tag Docker image
$ docker build -t nkn .
When starting the container, a directory with configuration files containing config.json
and
wallet.dat
(if exists) should be mapped to /nkn
directory in the container.
This directory will also be used for wallet, block data and logs storage.
Before you have a look at configuration, keep in mind that instead of running ./nknc
and ./nknd
(as shown in examples) you want to run in docker.
Assuming the configuration directory is the current directory:
Create a wallet:
$ docker run -v $PWD:/nkn -it nkn nknc wallet -c
Start bootstrap node by creating a network
$ docker run -p 30000-30003:30000-30003 -v $PWD:/nkn -it nkn nknd -c
Start other nodes by joining the network
$ docker run -p 30000-30003:30000-30003 -v $PWD:/nkn -it nkn nknd
NOTE: The -it
argument mean Run interactively
and Create a pseudo-tty
. Basically it means,
that it really wants to take the input from you. For using in scripts and running in the background
(for example a startup job) you should omit the -it
argument
Configuration
Create several directories (one per node you want to run) to save exectuable files nknd
nknc
(executables only applies for non-docker build) and
config file config.json
. Create new wallet in each directory
$ ./nknc wallet -c
Password:
Re-enter Password:
Address Public Key
------- ----------
NjCWGM1EfJeopJopSQGC6aLEkuug5GiwLM 03d45f701e7e330e1fd1c7cce09ffb95f7b1870e5c429ad8e8c950ddb879093f52
Config the same bootstrap node address and public key to each
config.json
file, for example:
{
"Magic": 99281,
"Version": 1,
"ChordPort": 30000,
"NodePort": 30001,
"HttpWsPort": 30002,
"HttpJsonPort": 30003,
"Hostname": "127.0.0.1",
"LogLevel": 1,
"IsTLS": false,
"ConsensusType": "ising",
"SeedList": [
"127.0.0.1:30003"
],
"GenesisBlockProposer": "03d45f701e7e330e1fd1c7cce09ffb95f7b1870e5c429ad8e8c950ddb879093f52"
}
Note that ports in different config.json
does not need to be different,
conflict in ports will be resolved automatically.
Start bootstrap node by creating a network
$ ./nknd -c
Start other nodes by joining the network
$ ./nknd
Or provide a seed node to override the one in config.json
$ ./nknd -seed $RemoteNodeIP:$HttpJsonPort
When the network contains enough nodes (more than the length of successor list
plus one, by default 9+), stop the node that created the network in order for
the relay service to work properly. Nodes joining the network later should use a
live node as seed.
Contributing
Can I submit a bug, suggestion or feature request?
Yes. Please open an issue for that.
Can I contribute patches to NKN project?
Yes, we appreciate your help! To make contributions, please fork the repo, push
your changes to the forked repo with signed-off commits, and open a pull request
here.
Please follow our Golang Style Guide
for coding style.
Please sign off your commit. This means adding a line "Signed-off-by: Name
" at the end of each commit, indicating that you wrote the code and have
the right to pass it on as an open source patch. This can be done automatically
by adding -s when committing:
git commit -s