Enable forging

What is forging?

Forging in DPoS networks is the same as mining in a PoW network: It is the process of adding new blocks to the chain.

In a DPoS system, each account that has an adequate enough balance to send a "register delegate" transaction can register a new delegate on the network. Other accounts can now vote for delegates by sending "cast votes" transactions.

The 101 delegates with the most accumulated vote weight are in the active forging positions, and each of them is allowed to forge one block in each round, (a round lasts for 101 blocks, after this then a new round starts).

As a reward for securing the network, the forging nodes receive the transaction fees and the block rewards of the forged blocks and their included transactions.

Add forging data to config

To enable your node to forge for a particular delegate, firstly it is required to insert some data into the config file under the chain.forging.delegates array:

  • publicKey: The publicKey of the delegate.

  • encryptedPassphrase: The symmetrically enrypted 12 word mnemonic passphrase of the delegate account.

To encrypt your passphrase, it is recommended to use one of the following alternatives listed below:

The first alternative with the Lisk Commander is described in detail below. Please ensure the Lisk Commander is installed in a secure environment. Upon completion, please follow these commands to generate the encrypted passphrase:

$ lisk
lisk passphrase:encrypt --outputPublicKey
Please enter your secret passphrase: ***** (1)
Please re-enter your secret passphrase: *****
Please enter your password: *** (2)
Please re-enter your password: ***
{
        "encryptedPassphrase": "iterations=1000000&cipherText=30a3c8&iv=b0d7322bf24e0dfe08462f4f&salt=aa7e26c9f4317b61b4f45b5c6909f941&tag=a2e0eadaf1f11a10b342965bc3bafc68&version=1",
        "publicKey": "a4465fd76c16fcc458448076372abf1912cc5b150663a64dffefe550f96feadd"
}
1 Enter the secret passphrase here that needs to be encrypted.
2 Enter the password here that will be required to decrypt the passphrase again.

  • Type in the passphrase followed by the password required for encryption.

  • This will result in the creation of an encryptedPassphrase key-value pair.

  • Add the JSON object to the config under chain.forging.delegates as can be seen below:

 
{
  modules: {
    chain: { (1)
      forging: { (2)
        force: false, (3)
        delegates: [ (4)
            {
                encryptedPassphrase: "iterations=1&salt=476d4299531718af8c88156aab0bb7d6&cipherText=663dde611776d87029ec188dc616d96d813ecabcef62ed0ad05ffe30528f5462c8d499db943ba2ded55c3b7c506815d8db1c2d4c35121e1d27e740dc41f6c405ce8ab8e3120b23f546d8b35823a30639&iv=1a83940b72adc57ec060a648&tag=b5b1e6c6e225c428a4473735bc8f1fc9&version=1",
                publicKey: "9d3058175acab969f41ad9b86f7a2926c74258670fe56b37c429c01fca9f2f0f"
            }
        ],
      },
    },
    http_api: { (5)
      forging: {
        access: {
          whiteList: ["127.0.0.1", "REPLACE_ME"], (6)
        },
      },
    }
  }
}
1 Contains options for the chain module.
2 Contains forging options for delegates.
3 Forces forging to be 'on'. This is only used on local development networks.
4 The list of delegates who are allowed to forge on this node. To successfully enable forging for a delegate, the public key and the encrypted passphrase need to be deposited here as a JSON object.
5 Contains options for the API module.
6 Replace with the IP address which will be used to access the node.
Restart the node to apply the changes in the config.

Enable/Disable Forging

Remember that after restarting the node, it is necessary to re-enable forging again.

Do not activate forging for the same delegate on multiple nodes. This behaviour will be punished by the network.

If the node is running on your local machine, it is possible to enable forging through the API client, without any further interruption.

Use the following curl command to enable the forging for your delegate as shown below:

curl -X PUT \
  http://127.0.0.1:4000/api/node/status/forging \
  -H 'cache-control: no-cache' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{
          "publicKey": "YYYYYYYYY",
          "password": "XXX",
          "forging": true
      }'

Use the following curl command to disable the forging for your delegate as shown below:

curl -X PUT \
  http://127.0.0.1:4000/api/node/status/forging \
  -H 'cache-control: no-cache' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{
          "publicKey": "YYYYYYYYY",
          "password": "XXX",
          "forging": false
      }'

  • publicKey is the key for the delegate which is required to be enabled/disabled.

  • password is the password used to encrypt your passphrase in the config.

  • forging is the boolean value to enable or disable the forging.

  • The HTTP Port can be different based on your configuration, therefore it is recommended to check the httpPort in your config.

The endpoints to enable and disable forging are idempotent.

This means that the results are identical, regardless of how many times the query is executed.

Check forging

Use the following curl command to verify the forging status of your delegate as shown below:

curl \
  http://127.0.0.1:7000/api/node/status/forging \
  -H 'cache-control: no-cache' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json'

The result should appear as shown below in the following code snippet:

{
  "meta": {},
  "data": [
    {
      "forging": true,
      "publicKey": "9bc945f92141d5e11e97274c275d127dc7656dda5c8fcbf1df7d44827a732664"
    }
  ],
  "links": {}
}