How to configure the local validator with Bitcoin Testnet4

This guide is intended for those wishing to view logs from their programs while benefitting from being connected to Bitcoin testnet4 and therefore gaining access to ordinals/runes helper tools.

Table of Contents:

Config
Local validator
Help commands
Log assistance

Config

First, you'll need to configure the network settings for connecting to Bitcoin testnet4. The new CLI accepts these parameters directly when starting the validator.

Note: We have redacted our Bitcoin node password to prevent abuse; contact us if you need this, otherwise provide your own node credentials and use the below as a reference.

When starting the validator, you'll need to include the following parameters:

cli validator start --network-mode testnet \
  --titan-rpc-endpoint titan-node.test.aws.archnetwork.xyz \
  --titan-rpc-port 49332 \
  --titan-rpc-username bitcoin \
  --titan-rpc-password redacted \
  --titan-rpc-wallet testwallet

Local validator

Note: You can start a local validator using the Arch Network CLI tool.

Additionally, you can download pre-built binaries from the arch-node releases page.

Be sure to download the local validator binary, not the regular validator.

Run the local validator

Use the CLI command to run the local validator. You'll need to have Docker installed and running.

cli validator start --network-mode testnet

The validator logs can be viewed easily within the Docker desktop dashboard.

Note: You can also run the standalone local validator binary where the logs will be streamed to stdout unless otherwise redirected.

Steps for running standalone validator binary:

Download the appropriate binary as well as the system_program.so file from arch-node releases page.
Store the system_program.so file within a new directory called /ebpf.

Your directory structure should resemble the following:
```
tmp/
├─ ebpf/
│  ├─ system_program.so
├─ local_validator
```

Run the binary and pass the relevant flags dependening on your target network.

RUST_LOG=info \
./local_validator \
--network-mode testnet \
--rpc-bind-ip 127.0.0.1 \
--rpc-bind-port 9002 \
--titan-rpc-endpoint titan-node.test.aws.archnetwork.xyz \
--titan-rpc-port 49332 \
--titan-rpc-username bitcoin \
--titan-rpc-password redacted

Help commands

This section includes some helpful material when needing to restart the node state or better ensure our infrastructure is operational before proceeding.

Arch node

The below commands can be used to assist with running the Local validator.

Start fresh

By removing the /.arch_data directory, we can wipe the state and effective start the node again from genesis (block: 0).

rm -rf .arch_data && RUST_LOG=info \
./local_validator \
--network-mode testnet \
--rpc-bind-ip 127.0.0.1 \
--rpc-bind-port 9002 \
--titan-rpc-endpoint titan-node.test.aws.archnetwork.xyz \
--titan-rpc-port 49332 \
--titan-rpc-username bitcoin \
--titan-rpc-password redacted

Pulse check

This cURL command will allow us to ensure that our Local validator is up and running correctly. We can use this to effective get a pulse check on the node which is helpful for debugging.

curl -vL POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '
{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "id":1,
    "method":"is_node_ready",
    "params":[]
}' \
http://localhost:9002/

Ordinarily, the arch-node logs will flood your terminal screen (or the Docker logs). This is less than idea when needing to review them carefully, so you can also direct the stdout to a file for later reading.

Here's an example of how to do this:

rm -rf .arch_data && RUST_LOG=info \
./local_validator \
--network-mode testnet \
--rpc-bind-ip 127.0.0.1 \
--rpc-bind-port 9002 \
--titan-rpc-endpoint titan-node.test.aws.archnetwork.xyz \
--titan-rpc-port 49332 \
--titan-rpc-username bitcoin \
--titan-rpc-password redacted \
> node-logs.txt

Then you can tail the output and view the logs as they stream in.

tail -f node-logs.txt

Deploy + interact

Now that everything is setup correctly, we can now deploy our program and begin interacting with it. The deploy step will prove everything works correctly.

cli deploy --network-mode testnet

And if you are running the local validator binary directly from the command-line, set the --rpc-url flag to specify your validator endpoint:

cli deploy --network-mode testnet --rpc-url http://localhost:9002

We hope this guide has been helpful, but as always, feel free to ask question within our Discord dev-chat or submit issues within out public-issues repo.

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