Masternode Setup

This guide is a Work-in-Progress, please use the PDF below until this page is complete.

Preface

The following guide to set up an Alterdot Masternode is geared towards beginners with no experience of servers, nor of cryptocurrencies.

You can skip some parts if you are already familiar with them.

Contents

Step 1: Masternode Server Setup

Step 2: Collateral Funds and Registration

Step 3: Additional Information

Requirements

In order to setup a Masternode you will need

• A local Alterdot wallet installed on your main machine containing 10,000 or more ADOT tocover the Masternode collateral cost and any possible transaction fees.

• One VPS with a fixed IPv4 address with the port 31000 opened.(If the VPS has both IPv4 and IPv6, this line: "bind=" should be added to thealterdot.conf file.)

What are the hosting requirements for a Masternode?

The hosting requirements for a Masternode are low as the Alterdot software needs very few system resources but in time as Masternode functionalities develop and our network expands these requirements will grow. Major changes will be announced beforehand.

A VPS with 1 vCore, 1024 MB RAM and a 15 GB SSD should be more than sufficient.

Which OS should I use for my Masternode?

You can almost any 64-bit OS based on Linux you want, but we would recommend using Ubuntu 20.04 because of two reasons:

• It’s quite beginner friendly.

• This guide is based on Ubuntu 20.04.

! Important ! Setting up your Masternode also includes waiting until you have 16 confirmations for the 10,000 ADOT collateral transaction so you might want to do Step 2.1 (not all of Step 2, just Step 2.1) first and then come back here.

Step 1 - Masternode setup

You cannot start a masternode by just following Step 1. Step 1 and 2 are mandatory.

You can jump to Step 1.3 if you know how to connect to your remote server

Step 1.1 Download and install Putty

This is applicable if your main wallet resides on a Windows machine. Download PuTTY at https://www.putty.org/. This is a tool used for connecting to your VPS and for managing it through the console. The installation process should be pretty straightforward.

For Linux/Mac machines use the inbuilt terminal to connect. Please note that you could also connect to your Linux server using Windows Powershell. However, PuTTY is recommended as you can save the host details.

Step 1.2 Logging into you VPS

Using the credentials you have been provided to the VPS from your hosting provider, connect to the server as below.

When you launch PuTTy, its opened window should look like this.

Type in the IP address of your VPS in the field below “Host Name (or IP address)” and choose SSH as the “Connection type”, the standard SSH port is 22 so unless specified otherwise by your VPS provider leave it as is. Click on the “Open” button. A new window (called Terminal or Console) should open.

The first time you connect to a server, PuTTY will ask if you trust the host. Press the Accept button and you will see the following screen

Your VPS credentials are now needed again:

1. Type your username.

2. Press “Enter”.

3. Copy your password and right-click in the PuTTY window (don’t worry if you can’t see anything written, the password is obfuscated on purpose) .

4. Press “Enter".

You should now logged in to your VPS

Step 1.3 Make sure that the time is correct on your server

Type the following commands into your Terminal (Ubuntu/Debian):

sudo apt-get install ntp
sudo systemctl enable ntp

On CentOS servers you can do it this way:

yum -y install ntp ntpdate ntp-doc systemctl
enable ntpd.service ntpdate pool.ntp.org
service ntpd start

Step 1.4. Get the Alterdot Linux wallet

To download the Alterdot wallet for Linux, type the following command into PuTTY:

wget https://github.com/Alterdot/Alterdot/releases/download/v1.9.2.1/alterdot-v1.9.2.1-linux.tar.gz

After that, we need to unpack the archive by typing this command into the Terminal:

tar -xzf alterdot-v1.9.2.1-linux.tar.gz

Now the alterdotd and alterdot-cli binaries are stored in alterdot-v1.9.2.1-linux folder

Step 1.5 Enabling the firewall and opening port 31000

For the Masternode to work, we need to have port 31000 opened. Before we can open port 31000, we should enable the firewall (to make the server is a bit more secure).

You can enable the firewall by typing this command into the Terminal:

sudo ufw enable

This warning will come up: “Command may disrupt existing ssh connections. Proceed with operation (y/n)?”. Type “y” and press enter.

To ensure that we can reconnect to our VPS, we need to open port 22 (the SSH port) first.

You can do this by running this command:

sudo ufw allow 22

Now, we can open the required port for the Masternode by running the command:

sudo ufw allow 31000

You will need to allow all other ports that the VPS is using. For e.g., if you are running a web server, you will need to allow ports 80 and 443.

Step 1.6 Starting the Alterdot daemon (or node)

We need to navigate to the Alterdot directory first by running this command:

cd alterdot-v1.9.2.1-linux

By running this command, you can also see the binaries inside:

ls -lisa

To start the Alterdot daemon, run the following command:

./alterdotd --daemon

You can now check the status of the Alterdot daemon by typing:

./alterdot-cli getinfo

It should look something like this (the blocks below should be lower than what you have):

The Alterdot daemon should automatically start syncing the blockchain and your number of blocks should be increasing.

This can be checked by using the getinfo command shown above:

"blocks": 2304

You will now have to wait until the wallet has finished syncing. It will be finished when you run the same command repeatedly a few times and the number of blocks doesn’t change anymore. Keep in mind that this could also happen in the initial part of the sync process where just block headers are downloaded and until that’s done your blocks won’t increase in number.

Step 1.7 The BLS Keys

Next, we need to create a BLS key pair. The private key stays with the Masternode and the public one goes into the registration transaction which we will handle later in the guide. This key is essential for the identity of your Masternode on our network, it is used to create a unique and secure signature in different processes.

You can generate the BLS pair by running this command:

./alterdot-cli bls generate

You now have to copy these keys. You can do this in PuTTY by clicking the left mouse button in the Terminal window and dragging to select the text. When you let go of the mouse button, the text is automatically copied to the clipboard. Paste both keys, secret and public, somewhere you won't lose them, a simple text document will do. They must to be saved for later usage!

You can now stop the Alterdot daemon by running this command:

./alterdot-cli stop

Step 1.8. Edit the Alterdot configuration file

Open up the Alterdot configuration file of your Masternode by typing and executing the command:

nano ~/.alterdot/alterdot.conf

Your terminal should look like this after you’ve run the command:

Add the following lines to the Alterdot configuration file:

onlynet=IPV4
externalip=<insert the IP of your VPS here>
masternode=1
daemon=1
masternodeblsprivkey=<insert the secret BLS key you generated in step 1.7>

If you have copied the key or you have it in your clipboard, you can just right-click in the Terminal to paste it. The public BLS key will be used later in the process of registering Deterministic Masternodes, until then save it somewhere. You can always regenerate a new BLS key and use that so don’t worry about losing it.

Now, save the Alterdot configuration file with CTRL + O and ENTER and close the file with CTRL + X.

Step 1.9 Starting the daemon

Run this command to start the daemon:

./alterdotd

Now your node is up and running, it has to be running at all times in order to not get PoSe banned. PoSe is the Proof-of-Service scoring system that our Deterministic Masternodes use to punish nodes that are not working.

Step 2: Collateral funds and registration

Step 2.1. Setting the collateral funds