Public Relay

Bootstrapping Dolos from a public relay node is the natural way of syncing the history of the chain but also a very slow option. It involves connecting to a single, public relay node using Ouroboros node-to-node mini-protocols and syncing the chain from origin.

Note

If you’re looking for a faster way of bootstrapping Dolos, please refer to the alternative Mithril option.

In essence, this bootstrapping procedure is just about starting Dolos and let it do its thing. From Dolos’ perspective, the procedure involves the following:

1. Read the genesis files to load initial data
2. Connect to the configured upstream node using Ouroboros
3. Start the chain-sync mini-protocol from origin
4. Keep syncing until reaching the tip of the chain

Configuration

To bootstrap using a public relay node, the required configuration includes the upstream section for the peer connection and the chain section for the network parameters:

[upstream]
peer_address = "preprod-node.world.dev.cardano.org:30000"

[chain]
type = "cardano"
magic = 1
is_testnet = true

section	property	type	example
upstream	peer_address	string	”preprod-node.world.dev.cardano.org:30000”
chain	magic	integer	1
chain	is_testnet	boolean	true

• peer_address: network address of peer node using {host}:{port} syntax.
• magic: the Cardano network magic number.
• is_testnet: flag to indicate if this network is a testnet or not.

Note

If you use the dolos init command to initialize your configuration, these values will be already populated with their defaults for each of the known networks.

Execution

To initialize the data stores for syncing from origin, run:

dolos bootstrap relay

Then start the daemon to begin syncing:

dolos daemon

The process will take from few hours to several days depending on the network. You’ll see different log outputs, some lines will indicate the slot of the latest block pulled from the relay node. Compare this value to the tip of the chain as shown in a public explorer to track the overall progress.

Note

The process supports resuming from previous runs. You can safely interrupt the process and continue again from where you left off by just running the command again.