IoTeX Delegate Manual

May 31, 2026 · View on GitHub

Index

Release Status

Here are the software versions we use:

  • TestNet: v2.4.2

Note To start and run a mainnet node, please click Join Mainnet

Join TestNet

This is the recommended way to start an IoTeX node

All the steps have written in scripts/all_in_one_testnet.sh, you can directly run sh scripts/all_in_one_testnet.sh

  1. Pull the docker image:
docker pull iotex/iotex-core:v2.4.2
  1. Set the environment with the following commands:
mkdir -p ~/iotex-var
cd ~/iotex-var

export IOTEX_HOME=$PWD

mkdir -p $IOTEX_HOME/data
mkdir -p $IOTEX_HOME/log
mkdir -p $IOTEX_HOME/etc

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iotexproject/iotex-bootstrap/v2.4.2/config_testnet.yaml > $IOTEX_HOME/etc/config.yaml
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iotexproject/iotex-bootstrap/v2.4.2/genesis_testnet.yaml > $IOTEX_HOME/etc/genesis.yaml

  1. Edit $IOTEX_HOME/etc/config.yaml, look for externalHost and producerPrivKey, uncomment the lines and fill in your external IP and private key. If you leave producerPrivKey empty, your node will be assgined with a random key.

  2. Start from a baseline snapshot (rather than sync from the genesis block), run the following commands:

curl -L -C - -o $IOTEX_HOME/data.tar.gz https://t.iotex.me/testnet-data-snapshot-core-latest
  1. Extract the data package:
tar -xzf $IOTEX_HOME/data.tar.gz -C $IOTEX_HOME/data/

For advanced users, there are three options to consider:

  • Option 1: If you plan to run your node as a gateway, please use the snapshot with index data:
curl -L -C - -o $IOTEX_HOME/data_index.tar.gz https://t.iotex.me/testnet-data-snapshot-gateway-latest
tar -xzf data_index.tar.gz
  • Optional 2: If you only want to sync chain data from 0 height without relaying on legacy delegate election data from Ethereum, you can setup legacy delegate election data with following command:
curl -L -C - -o $IOTEX_HOME/poll.tar.gz https://storage.iotex.io/poll.testnet.tar.gz; tar -xzf $IOTEX_HOME/poll.tar.gz --directory $IOTEX_HOME/data
  • Optional 3: If you want to sync the chain from 0 height and also fetching legacy delegate election data from Ethereum, please change the gravityChainAPIs in config.yaml to use your infura key with Ethereum archive mode supported or change the API endpoint to an Ethereum archive node which you can access.
  1. Run the following command to start a node:
docker run -d --restart on-failure --name iotex \
        -p 4690:4690 \
        -p 8080:8080 \
        -v=$IOTEX_HOME/data:/var/data:rw \
        -v=$IOTEX_HOME/log:/var/log:rw \
        -v=$IOTEX_HOME/etc/config.yaml:/etc/iotex/config_override.yaml:ro \
        -v=$IOTEX_HOME/etc/genesis.yaml:/etc/iotex/genesis.yaml:ro \
        iotex/iotex-core:v2.4.2 \
        iotex-server \
        -config-path=/etc/iotex/config_override.yaml \
        -genesis-path=/etc/iotex/genesis.yaml

Now your node should be started successfully.

If you want to also make your node be a gateway, which could process API requests from users, use the following command instead:

docker run -d --restart on-failure --name iotex \
        -p 4690:4690 \
        -p 14014:14014 \
        -p 15014:15014 \
        -p 8080:8080 \
        -v=$IOTEX_HOME/data:/var/data:rw \
        -v=$IOTEX_HOME/log:/var/log:rw \
        -v=$IOTEX_HOME/etc/config.yaml:/etc/iotex/config_override.yaml:ro \
        -v=$IOTEX_HOME/etc/genesis.yaml:/etc/iotex/genesis.yaml:ro \
        iotex/iotex-core:v2.4.2 \
        iotex-server \
        -config-path=/etc/iotex/config_override.yaml \
        -genesis-path=/etc/iotex/genesis.yaml \
        -plugin=gateway
  1. Make sure TCP ports 4690, 8080 (also 14014 if used) are open on your firewall and load balancer (if any).

Join Testnet without using Docker

This is not the preferred way to start an IoTeX node

  1. Set the environment with the following commands:

Same as Join TestNet step 2

  1. Build server binary:
git clone https://github.com/iotexproject/iotex-core.git
cd iotex-core
git checkout v2.4.2

// optional
export GOPROXY=https://goproxy.io
go mod download
make clean build-all
cp ./bin/server $IOTEX_HOME/iotex-server
  1. Edit configs

Same as Join TestNet step 3. Also make sure you update all db paths in config.yaml to correct location if you don't put them under /var/data/

  1. Start from a snapshot

Same as Join TestNet step 4

  1. Run the following command to start a node:
nohup $IOTEX_HOME/iotex-server \
        -config-path=$IOTEX_HOME/etc/config.yaml \
        -genesis-path=$IOTEX_HOME/etc/genesis.yaml &

Now your node should be started successfully.

If you want to also make your node be a gateway, which could process API requests from users, use the following command instead:

nohup $IOTEX_HOME/iotex-server \
        -config-path=$IOTEX_HOME/etc/config.yaml \
        -genesis-path=$IOTEX_HOME/etc/genesis.yaml \
        -plugin=gateway &
  1. Make sure TCP ports 4690, 8080 (also 14014 if used) are open on your firewall and load balancer (if any).

Interact with Blockchain

ioctl

You can install ioctl (a command-line interface for interacting with IoTeX blockchain)

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iotexproject/iotex-core/master/install-cli.sh | sh

You can point ioctl to your node (if you enable the gateway plugin):

ioctl config set endpoint localhost:14014 --insecure

Or you can point it to our API nodes:

  • TestNet secure: api.testnet.iotex.one:443
  • TestNet insecure: api.testnet.iotex.one:80

If you want to set an insecure endpoint, you need to add --insecure option.

Generate key:

ioctl account create

Get consensus delegates of current epoch:

ioctl node delegate

Refer to CLI document for more details.

Other Commonly Used Commands

Claim reward:

ioctl action claim ${amountInIOTX} -l 10000 -p 1 -s ${ioAddress|alias}

Exchange IoTeX native token to ERC20 token on Ethereum via Tube service:

ioctl action invoke io1p99pprm79rftj4r6kenfjcp8jkp6zc6mytuah5 ${amountInIOTX} -s ${ioAddress|alias} -l 400000 -p 1 -b d0e30db0

Click IoTeX Tube docs for detailed documentation of the tube service.

JSON RPC API(Babel service)

Our node supports most of methods of Ethereum's JSON-RPC protocol. The local endpoint of babal service is localhost:15014 on the gateway node.

Additional method support could be requested here.

Enable Logrotate

logrotate is pre-installed when building the image. But crond (daemon to execute scheduled commands) doesn't automatically start when the docker contaiter starts in alpine linux.

To enable log logrotation, docker exec -it <container> crond -b is expected to be run after the container starts

Operate Your Node

Checking Node log

Container logs can be accessed with the following command.

docker logs iotex

Content can be filtered with:

docker logs -f --tail 100 iotex |grep --color -E "epoch|height|error|rolldposctx"

Stop and remove container

When starting the container with --name=iotex, you must remove the old container before a new build.

docker stop iotex
docker rm iotex

Pause and Restarting container

Container can be "stopped" and "restarted" with:

docker stop iotex
docker start iotex

Upgrade Your Node(One Line Upgrader)

Make sure you have $IOTEX_HOME already set up, and all the files(configs, dbs etc) are placed in the right locations (Please refer to the Join TestNet section).

To upgrade testnet node, use following command. By default, it will upgrade to latest testnet version.

sudo bash # If your docker requires root privilege
bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iotexproject/iotex-bootstrap/master/scripts/setup_fullnode.sh) testnet

To enable gateway on testnet

sudo bash # If your docker requires root privilege
bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iotexproject/iotex-bootstrap/master/scripts/setup_fullnode.sh) testnet plugin=gateway

To stop auto upgdrade cron job and iotex server program, you can run

sudo bash # If your docker requires root privilege
bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iotexproject/iotex-bootstrap/master/scripts/stop_fullnode.sh)

Gateway Plugin

Node with gateway plugin enabled will perform extra indexing to serve API requests of more detail chain information, such as number of actions in a block or query actions by hash.

Q&A

Please refer here for Q&A.