How to become a block producing witness?

The following document provides an overview of how to become a witness node, the perks of becoming a witness, duties of a witness, and a brief description about the node types.

Becoming a Peerplays WitnessPeerplays Community Docs

Prerequisites to become a block producing witness:

1. An existing account

2. A machine running a witness_node that can be configured to produce blocks

Steps to become a block producing witness node

1. Create a Peerplays account

2. Upgrade account to Lifetime membership

3. Configuring witness node as a Block producer

4. Adding witness id and private key pair into config.ini file

5. Start the witness node and vote for yourself

1. Create a Peerplays account

Steps to register a new Peerplays account

The first peerplays account can be created in a flash using Peerplays DEX by following the steps in below document,

Account CreationPeerplays Community Docs

Peerplays provides two networks on which the user may create an account - main net and test net. To learn and familiarize the operations of a node use the test net account. After learning the process and to work on the real Peerplays network, use the main-net account. The User Guide will help you navigate Peerplays DEX and learn about its features and options in detail.

Click the URL below to create an account and then to login Peerplays DEX,

1. Mainnet Peerplays DEX access

Click the below link to use the Main-net DEX:

https://swap.peerplays.com

2. Testnet Peerplays DEX access

Click the below link to use the Test-net DEX:

https://testnet.peerplays.download/

Account creation with Peerplays DEX

Click the below link to learn in detail about the Peerplays account creation

How to create a Peerplays Account?Peerplays Infrastructure Docs

2. Upgrade account to lifetime membership

The account should have some PPY balance to become a lifetime member. To create a witness, the account must have a lifetime membership status.

Syntax:

upgrade_account created-username true

Example:

upgrade_account testuser-01 true

Output:

3. Configuring your account to serve as a block-producing Witness

Your account can be configured as an eligible "block producer" by using cli wallet. The commands to complete the configuration are explained in the below link.

Create yourself as a witness

The next step is to create a witness

The URL in this command is your own URL which should point to a page which describes who you are and why you want to become a Peerplays witness. Note your block signing key after you enter this command.

To execute the command, some PPY is required.

Syntax:

create_witness created-username "https://your-url-to-witness-proposal" true

Example:

create_witness testuser-01 "test-witness" true

Expected Output:

Collecting the witness account info

The Block-signing key and private keys are required to get the witness id. From the above output the block-signing key is obtained and using that the private key can be generated.

Syntax:

get_private_key YOURBLOCKSIGNINGKEY

Then dump your keys to check and compare. One of the returned values from the following command should match your block_signing_key.

dump_private_keys

Last we'll get your witness ID.

get_witness created-username

Example:

get_private_key TEST5V---MWfn
dump_private_keys
get_witness testuser-01

Expected Output:

4. Adding witness id and private key pair into config.ini file

Exit the cli_wallet with the quit command. Back in the first command line window, we'll stop the node (Ctrl + c) and edit the config.ini file once again.

nano $HOME/witness_node_data_dir/config.ini

witness-id = "your_witness_id"
private-key = ["block_signing_key", "private_key_for_your_block_signing_key"]

5. Start the Witness and vote for yourself

witness_node

Once again, we need to wait for the node to sync the blocks to use the cli_wallet. After the sync, you can vote for yourself. Back in the second command line window:

cli_wallet
unlock your-password-here

Syntax:

vote_for_witness created-username created-username true true

Example Output:

Now you can check your votes to verify it worked.

Syntax:

get_witness your_witness_account 

Example output: