chainstake

P-chain staking scripts

The repo contains scripts for adding (staking) FTSO validators on Flare and Coston2 networks. FTSO validators are data providers for Flare Time Series Oracles (FTSO) on respective networks. By submitting price signals and competing for reward they earn certain weight, which allows them to add their validator node for a limited time with exactly the earned weight. Adding a validator node is equivalent to opening a staking session for the prescribed duration with staking amount equal to the prescribed weight, earned by the data providing activity. The amount (weight) is between 1 and 10000 FLR (or C2FLR). A validator can get (or calculate) their staking amount on this repository.

Installation

Clone this repository by running

git clone https://github.com/flare-foundation/p-chain-staking-code.git

and run yarn inside the cloned repo folder.

C-chain and P-chain

Flare has three chains - X-chain (exchange chain), C-chain (contract chain), and P-chain (platform chain). For stake flow we use C-chain and P-chain. An account on each chain is defined by a public-private key pair. The addresses on each of the two chains are derived from the public key. Note that each chain has different address representations. On the P-chain there is no standard format and usually Bech32 format is used, while on the C-chain the usual Ethereum format is used (to comply with Ethereum Virtual Machine).

Stake flow

A usual stake flow works as follows.

• User wants to add a validator node by staking for a given duration and amount from his account (defined by the private key).
• Funds usually reside on the C-chain account and have to be exported from the C-chain.
• Exported funds can then be imported to the corresponding P-chain account.
• Funds on the P-chain account can be used to start staking (adding validator node).
• After the period (duration) ends, the validator is automatically removed (staking is finished).

In order to use the scripts from this repo, one has first to obtain the private key (either a length 64 hexadecimal or cb58 format) and paste it into .env file. Make sure that you run scripts on a secure machine.

To obtain the derived C-chain and P-chain addresses, along with the associated public key, use yarn getAddresses.

To perform full stake flow, run the following scripts

yarn exportCP -a amount -f fee
yarn importCP
yarn stake --id nodeId -d duration -a amount

Here, amount is the amount to export / stake (in FLR), fee is an optional parameter that specifies the fee of a transaction (in FLR), duration is the staking time (in seconds), and nodeId is the id of the node being deployed as a validator.

The configuration for the network is inside config.ts. Mainly, it is used to differentiate between testnet (Coston2) and mainnet (flare).

Getting funds from P-chain back to C-chain

The funds can be returned from P-chain back to C-chain by running the following scripts

yarn exportPC -a amount
yarn importPC -f fee

where amount and fee are optional. Omitting amount exports all funds from P-chain.

Note that methods affecting the P-chain (importCP and exportPC) always use a fixed fee of 0.001, while methods affecting the C-chain (exportCP and importPC) have variable fees and can thus be either set or else calculated automatically.

Testing locally with go-flare node

This code can be tested locally, using a node sourced here.

First, add a private key with some funds on C-chain into .env - you can use a well-funded test account with the private key 0xd49743deccbccc5dc7baa8e69e5be03298da8688a15dd202e20f15d5e0e9a9fb.

Then, you have to register your validator configuration hash directly in the node code. Say you want to use the node with id NodeID-DMAS3hKKWMydmWGmGd265EYCoV7zFWEHK to stake 10000 FLR for duration of 1512000 seconds. To calculate the hash, run

yarn getHash --id NodeID-DMAS3hKKWMydmWGmGd265EYCoV7zFWEHK -a 10000 1512000

The above produces the hash 2b52aae672d041ec5ec597bb72b6c1815f01f2b895ed5cddb42c45ca0e629317. Add the hash to the array here in your cloned go-flare repo. Now you can setup the node(s) as described in go-flare's README.md.

To stake, you have to first export funds from the C-chain and then import them to the P-chain, which is done by running yarn exportCP -a 10000 and yarn importCP (if you get errInsufficientFunds error, try raising the default fee when exporting funds). Finally, you can add a validator by running

yarn stake NodeID-DMAS3hKKWMydmWGmGd265EYCoV7zFWEHK 10000 1512000

Versions

Some info on upgrading to a new version.

• Build the project with yarn build
• Check that lib can be created npm pack
• Bump to next version npm version [<newversion> | major | minor | patch | premajor | preminor | prepatch | prerelease | from-git]
• Publish with npm publish
• Make sure to push to git with git push