Archipel Keys initialization

October 17, 2020 ยท View on GitHub

Archipel keys are now automatically generate by archipel CLI. You do not need anymore to generate them manually. They are all generate with archipel CLI. The following doc explaining how to generate them and how Archipel keys works is on educational purpose only for curious developers.

By archipel keys, we means all keys needed for node identities in the federation and use for authoring blocks and chain consensus, transactions propagation of runtime functions calls. The only keys that you need to generate are for your external service. For the first supported external service polkadot, you have to generate Polkadot sessions keys for the validator service to operate properly.

Subkey Tool

Archipel and polkadot use Substrate framework. This framwork has utility tool to generate keys. You will use it to facilitate the keys generation. The first step is to download and install subkey. Then check subkey installation and options available :

subkey --version
subkey --help

Create a specific folder and generate thoses keys on a secure device with all securities regarding privates keys generation in crypto in general (internet cut-off etc ...).

Archipel keys

The minimal nodes of an archipel is 3. You need to generate keys for this 3 nodes.

You can generate those keys step-by-step to understand better and repeat 3 times for the 3 nodes. There is also a full steps command line to generate quickly when you master it like a ninja.

Archipel Step by step keys creation

subkey generate --network substrate > archipel-node1-sr25519.keys

Note: the default keys generation is an sr25519. To be sure, you can also specify -s or --sr25519 option.

You will need the format of the ed25519 keys from the same seed. To do this you will first extract the phrase seed 12 mnemonic words of node 1 from archipel-node1-sr25519.keys file. then you keep the seed phrase in another file : archipel-node1.seed

cat archipel-node1-sr25519.keys | grep phrase | cut -d"\`" -f2 > archipel-node1.seed

now you can extract ed25519 keys format from phrase of archipel-node1.seed with :

subkey inspect --network substrate --scheme Ed25519 "$(<archipel-node1.seed)" > archipel-node1-ed25519.keys

repeat the same commands above for node 2 and node 3. Or use this shortcut loop :

Archipel Full steps keys creation

for i in `seq 1 3`; do echo "create keys archipel-node$i" && subkey generate --network substrate > archipel-node$i-sr25519.keys && cat archipel-node$i-sr25519.keys | grep phrase | cut -d"\`" -f2 > archipel-node$i.seed && subkey inspect --network substrate --scheme Ed25519 "$(<archipel-node$i.seed)" > archipel-node$i-ed25519.keys ; done

Archipel keys creation expected result

In your foder you must have now 9 files :

archipel-node1-ed25519.keys
archipel-node1.seed
archipel-node1-sr25519.keys
archipel-node2-ed25519.keys
archipel-node2.seed
archipel-node2-sr25519.keys
archipel-node3-ed25519.keys
archipel-node3.seed
archipel-node3-sr25519.keys

Matching archipel files keys with Archpel env variables

  • ARCHIPEL_KEY_SEED=what you find into your archipel-node1|2|3.seed file.

  • ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_SR25519_LIST='SS58 Address of archipel-node1-sr25519.keys','SS58 Address of archipel-node2-sr25519.keys','SS58 Address of archipel-node3-sr25519.keys'

  • ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_ED25519_LIST='SS58 Address of archipel-node1-ed25519.keys','SS58 Address of archipel-node2-ed25519.keys','SS58 Address of archipel-node3-ed25519.keys'

ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_SR25519_LIST and ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_ED25519_LIST are the same values for your 3 archipel nodes.

Lazy? Here utility commands to generate ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_SR25519_LIST and ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_ED25519_LIST value from files :

  • ARCHIPEL_KEY_SEED select line according to node number you want to valorize
export ARCHIPEL_KEY_SEED=$(cat archipel-node1.seed)

or

export ARCHIPEL_KEY_SEED=$(cat archipel-node2.seed)

or

export ARCHIPEL_KEY_SEED=$(cat archipel-node3.seed)
  • ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_SR25519_LIST
export ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_SR25519_LIST=$(cat archipel-node1-sr25519.keys | grep SS58 | cut -d":" -f2 | sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//'),$(cat archipel-node2-sr25519.keys | grep SS58 | cut -d":" -f2 | sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//'),$(cat archipel-node3-sr25519.keys | grep SS58 | cut -d":" -f2 | sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//')
  • ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_ED25519_LIST
export ARCHIPEL_AUTHORITIES_ED25519_LIST=$(cat archipel-node1-ed25519.keys | grep SS58 | cut -d":" -f2 | sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//'),$(cat archipel-node2-ed25519.keys | grep SS58 | cut -d":" -f2 | sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//'),$(cat archipel-node3-ed25519.keys | grep SS58 | cut -d":" -f2 | sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//')