👉🏻

Some familiarity with the Linux/Mac command line and Docker is required.

Overview

Darwinia Collators are members of the Darwinia Network responsible for producing blocks and supporting block liveness. They collect parachain transactions from users and produce state transition proofs for Relay Chain validators. In short, collators offer blocks to validators on the relay chain for finalization.

Learn more about Collator by clicking here.

Reward that a Dariwnia Collator Can Get

where

Networks

Network	Chain Name	Collators Max	Session Length
Crab 2	crab	14	6 hours
Darwinia 2	darwinia	10	6 hours

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The following steps are based on Crab 2. Darwinia’s steps are similar.

Run Collator Node

Recommended Hardware

RAM: 16 GB:

Storage(SSD): 1 TB

Use Precompiled Binary

bash
#!/bin/bash

DARWINIA_HOME="$HOME/darwinia"
DARWINIA_DATA_DIR="$DARWINIA_HOME/data"
mkdir -p $DARWINIA_DATA_DIR

# Download and extract the darwinia binary to your DARWINIA_HOME directory
wget -P $DARWINIA_HOME https://github.com/darwinia-network/darwinia/releases/download/v6.0.0-1/darwinia2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.bz2
tar xvf $DARWINIA_HOME/darwinia2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.bz2 -C $DARWINIA_HOME
rm $DARWINIA_HOME/darwinia2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.bz2

# Run
$DARWINIA_HOME/darwinia \
  --chain=crab \
  --base-path=$DARWINIA_DATA_DIR \
  --collator

# Or, run by PM2
# pm2 start $DARWINIA_HOME/darwinia -- \
#  --chain=crab \
#  --base-path=$DARWINIA_DATA_DIR \
#  --collator

💡

To increase the high availability of your collator node, consider using process management tools like PM2.

💡

error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.1.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory If you encounter this error, try the following method: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72133316/libssl-so-1-1-cannot-open-shared-object-file-no-such-file-or-directory

Alternatively, you can use Docker

bash
#!/bin/bash

DARWINIA_DATA_DIR="$HOME/darwinia/data"
mkdir -p $DARWINIA_DATA_DIR
chown -R 1000:1000 $DARWINIA_DATA_DIR

docker run -dit \
  --name collator \
  -v $DARWINIA_DATA_DIR:/data ghcr.io/darwinia-network/darwinia:sha-a7ba402 \
  --chain=crab \
  --base-path=/data \
  --collator

bash
docker logs -f --tail 10 collator

(Optional) Download History Kusama Data

The Kusama node may take up to 2 days to complete syncing. You can download the Kusama history data from a snapshot to accelerate the process. The download process may take approximately 1-2 hours.

bash
sudo apt install lz4
wget -c https://ksm-rocksdb.polkashots.io/snapshot -O - | tar -I lz4 -xf - -C $DARWINIA_DATA_DIR/polkadot/chains/ksmcc3/

# for darwinia
# wget -c https://dot-rocksdb.polkashots.io/snapshot -O - | tar -I lz4 -xf - -C $DARWINIA_DATA_DIR/polkadot/chains/polkadot

(Optional) Download History Crab2 Data

You also can download Crab2 data from snapshots. http://snapshots.crab.network/

bash
sudo apt install zstd
wget http://snapshots.crab.network/crab2-<LAST_SNAPSHOT>.tar.zst -O - | tar -I zstd -xf - -C $DARWINIA_DATA_DIR/chains/crab2

Prepare Session Key

Generate a session key

Enter your Docker container first if you are using Docker, docker exec -it collator bash

shell
curl -X POST \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{"id":1, "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"author_rotateKeys", "params":[]}' \
     http://127.0.0.1:9933

If everything is correct, this command will return the session key.

Or, Insert your existing sr25519 key as the session key

bash
#!/bin/bash

SR_PHRASE="..." # Mnemonic Phrase
SR_PUB_KEY="..." 

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     --data '{ "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"author_insertKey", "params":["aura", "'"${SR_PHRASE}"'", "'"${SR_PUB_KEY}"'"],"id":1 }' \
     "http://127.0.0.1:9933"

Set Session Key & Your Commission Rate

Open the following URL in your browser, and connect to your wallet account:

https://staking.darwinia.network/#/?network=crab

Steps:

Wait Until the Next Session

You are currently in the candidate collator waiting pool. If you rank among the top 14 when the next session begins (after up to 6 hours in Crab2), you will become a collator. Upon successfully performing your duties as a collator during the next session, you will be eligible for rewards.

How to Become a Collator