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, edit the arch-cli configuration file and insert the following details into the testnet section.

arch-cli config edit

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.

Your arch-cli configuration file should resemble something like the following, with the leader_rpc_endpoint being the endpoint for reaching your Local validator, which defaults to port 9002.

[networks.testnet]
type = "testnet"
bitcoin_rpc_endpoint = "bitcoin-node.test.aws.archnetwork.xyz"
bitcoin_rpc_port = "49332"
bitcoin_rpc_user = "bitcoin"
bitcoin_rpc_password = "redacted"
bitcoin_rpc_wallet = "testwallet"
leader_rpc_endpoint = "http://localhost:9002"

Local validator

Note: the arch-cli (and Docker) can be used to run the local validator.

Additionally, if you do not already have the local validator installed, please pull it from the arch-node releases page.

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

Run the local validator

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

arch-cli validator start

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

You can also run the standalone binary yourself where the logs will be streamed to stdout unless otherwise redirected.

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

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 \
--bitcoin-rpc-endpoint bitcoin-node.test.aws.archnetwork.xyz \
--bitcoin-rpc-port 49332 \
--bitcoin-rpc-username bitcoin \
--bitcoin-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.

arch-cli deploy --network testnet

And if you are running the local validator binary directly from the command-line, set the --rpc-endpoint flag so it overwrites the leader_rpc_endpoint in the arch-cli config if this information was not changed:

arch-cli deploy --network 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.

The Arch Book