Nockchain

Nockchain is a lightweight chain for heavyweight compute. It uses ZK-Proof of Work (zkPoW). Miners create a ZK-Proof (ZKP) of a fixed puzzle computation, then hash the ZKP, and earn $NOCK based on their computation power.

The team has released a Public Testnet to run a local testnet node and a testnet miner, to explore how Nockchain works before Mainnet goes live.

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$NOCK Details

• Genesis Mainnet and NOCK Mining starts May 21th.
• 10-min block times (like Bitcoin).
• Total Supply: 2^32 nocks (around 4.29 billion).
• Fair launch: 100% of $NOCK will be issued to Miners.
• $NOCK is used to pay for blockspace on Nockchain.

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How to Mine

• The mining terms is exactly same a Bitcoin PoW mining.
• More computational power = More rewards
• More miners on the network = Higher hashrate = More difficulty to mine rewards

Method 1: Solo (CLI):

• You run a solo CPU-based Miner Node on your system which will certainly need a powerful hardware.
• You can follow CLI Setup steps.

Method 2: Pool & Method 3: GUI

• You join a pool (same as bitcoin mining), share your computational power and earn rewards in a shared pool of rewards.
• Official mining method is CLI introduced by the team, and no official Pool or GUI mining programs introduced.
• But new community-driven Projects and Pools are poping up.
• GUI Setup (App): There's a new project called Nockpool, I think they are building a GUI-based Node so you can easily open a wallet on Windows, join a pool, and Mine $NOCK.

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CLI Miner Setup

Hardware Requirements

Hardware requirement is highly speculative since no one knows how Mainnet-launch goes.

Miner is CPU-based initially
RAM	CPU	Disk
64 GB	6 cores or higher	100-200 GB SSD

• more CPU = more hashrate = more chances
• We still can't say that's enough, because it's just a testnet environment and we need to wait until mainnet.

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OS Requirements

• Windows Users: Install Linux Ubuntu on your Windows using this Guide
• VPS: Recommended crypto-payment VPS provider to Purchase or Visit VPS Beginner Guide

Note: Miners are initially CPU-based for users and will eventually move to GPU and ASIC later

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CLI Installation Steps

Step 1: Install Dependecies

• Update Packages

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

• Install Packages:

sudo apt install curl iptables build-essential git wget lz4 jq make gcc nano automake autoconf tmux htop nvme-cli libgbm1 pkg-config libssl-dev libleveldb-dev tar clang bsdmainutils ncdu unzip libleveldb-dev libclang-dev llvm-dev -y

• Rust:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

source $HOME/.cargo/env

• Enable memory overcommit:

sudo sysctl -w vm.overcommit_memory=1

Step 2: Delete Old Repo and Wipe All Data

# kill miner screen
screen -XS miner quit

# remove nockchain
rm -rf nockchain
rm -rf .nockapp

Step 3: NockChain Repo

git clone https://github.com/zorp-corp/nockchain

cd nockchain

Step 4: Build

• Copy .env file from the example one:

cp .env_example .env

• Build: (takes time depending on your hardware.)

make install-hoonc

export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"

make build

make install-nockchain-wallet

export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"

make install-nockchain

export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"

Step 5: Setup Wallet

Make sure you are in nockchain directory.

• Set PATH:

export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"

• Create wallet:

nockchain-wallet keygen

• Save memo, private key & public key of your wallet.

Note: After every terminal restart, Ensure you execute these two commands before executing wallet commands again: cd nockchain & export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH". By doing this, you won't get Error: wallet: command not found.

• Replace the value of MINING_PUBKEY= in .env with your own Public Key:

nano .env

To save: Press Ctrl + X, Y & Enter.

Step 6: Backup/Import Wallet Keys

Backup wallet keys:

nockchain-wallet export-keys

• This will save your keys to a file called keys.export in the current directory.

Import wallet keys:

nockchain-wallet import-keys --input keys.export

• Make sure keys.export is in your nockchain directory.

• Note: For Local systems who are using a home router network which is mostly behind NAT, they need to forward ports. Ask chatgpt until I get the chance to write a guide for it.

Step 7: Run Miner

• Enable memory overcommit with this:

sudo sysctl -w vm.overcommit_memory=1

• First, Make sure you are in nockchain directory:

cd ~/nockchain

• The following method will be for running multiple miner instances on a server, you can repeat it by inscreasing n numbers by n+1

Run Miner 1:

# create directory
mkdir miner1 && cd miner1

# open screen
screen -S miner1

# start miner
RUST_LOG=info,nockchain=info,nockchain_libp2p_io=info,libp2p=info,libp2p_quic=info \
MINIMAL_LOG_FORMAT=true \
nockchain --mine \
--mining-pubkey PUB_KEY

# OR

# start miner with peers (find good peers in nockchain tg)
RUST_LOG=info,nockchain=info,nockchain_libp2p_io=info,libp2p=info,libp2p_quic=info \
MINIMAL_LOG_FORMAT=true \
nockchain --mine \
--mining-pubkey PUB_KEY \
--peer /ip4/95.216.102.60/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/65.108.123.225/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/65.109.156.108/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/65.21.67.175/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/65.109.156.172/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/34.174.22.166/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/34.95.155.151/udp/30000/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/34.18.98.38/udp/30000/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/96.230.252.205/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/94.205.40.29/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/159.112.204.186/udp/3006/quic-v1 \
--peer /ip4/217.14.223.78/udp/3006/quic-v1

• Replace PUBLIC_KEY.
• If you are getting generating new candidate, then you are sucessfully mining blocks!
• No worry if you are getting Errors like command: timer, ConnectionError, etc.

• To minimize screen: Ctrl + A + D
• Now, You can run more Miner instances by increasing +1 to the numbers of run command.
• Miner's highly eating your RAM, keep watching your RAM usage with command: htop, before running more instances.

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Import blockchain sync state

You can import state.jam (snapshot of blockchain state) at miner startup to bypass syncing mined blocks from block 0

Official state.jam

Offcial state.jam provided by team can be found here

To download:

# install gdown
pip3 install gdown

# replace <google-drive-file-url> with your file url
gdown <google-drive-file-url>

Import

Add this flag to your run command

--state-jam <state.jam-path>

• Replace <state.jam-path> with your state.jam path
• Example: If downloaded in nockchain directory your flag will be --state-jam ~/nockchain

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Useful Commands:

Restart Miner:

• If you ever stopped your Miner, to restart it again, delete old data files first:

rm -rf ./.data.nockchain .socket/nockchain_npc.sock

• Make sure you are in the specific miner's directory you want to restart .e.g miner1, miner2, etc.

Screen commands

• Ensure screens do not overlap. Before opening or switching to another screen, minimize or close the current screen.
• Replace miner with your miner's screen name .e.g miner1, miner2, etc.

# Return screen
screen -r miner

# Minimize screen
Press: CTRL + A + D

# Screens list
screen -ls

# Stop Node (when inside a screen)
Press: Ctrl + C

# Kill and Remove Node (when outside a screen)
screen -XS miner quit

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Get balance

Make sure you are in a miner directory to get connected to the network when executing this command .e.g (cd ~/nockchain/miner1)

nockchain-wallet --nockchain-socket .socket/nockchain_npc.sock list-notes

If you got balance, then the response is like this:

- name: [first='xxxxx' last='xxxxx']
- assets: 2.576.980.378
- source: [p=[BLAH] is-coinbase=%.y]