HowTo run PoP Miner
See: Main_Page, PoP_Miner_CommandLine, PoP_Transaction_LifeCycle, PoP_Miner_Rewards, PoP_Reward_Summary
Contents
- 1 Overview
- 2 Getting Started
- 3 Your First Mine
- 4 Interacting with the Command-Line
- 5 PoP Mining Lifecycle
- 6 Major Changes
- 7 Reference
- 8 FAQ
- 8.1 Does the PoP Miner require BTC or tBTC?
- 8.2 How can I see my PoP rewards?
- 8.3 Do I need to run a full Bitcoin node?
- 8.4 Does the Bitcoin I send to my PoP Wallet need to be confirmed?
- 8.5 How do I set the BTC transaction fee?
- 8.6 How to set up a cron schedule for mining
- 8.7 How to auto-mine every Nth round?
- 8.8 Can I run multiple PoP Miners?
- 8.9 Can I import a previous BTC wallet?
- 9 Troubleshooting
- 10 Command Line Reference
Overview
The Proof-of-Proof (PoP) consensus protocol enables a security inheriting blockchain (VeriBlock) to inherit the complete proof-of-work of a security providing blockchain (Bitcoin). For a deeper understanding of the PoP consensus protocol, please refer to the PoP White Paper.
A PoP miner serves as the communication and transactional bridge between the VeriBlock blockchain and the Bitcoin blockchain. As often as they wish, a PoP miner will take the most recent blockchain state data from the VeriBlock blockchain, along with an identification of the miner, and publish it to the Bitcoin blockchain via a transaction containing an OP_RETURN with the embedded data. The PoP miner then waits for the transaction to be included in a Bitcoin block. When a publication transactions is confirmed, the miner constructs and submits a "proof-of-proof transaction" that proves inclusion of the publication in the Bitcoin blockchain as well as ownership of the publication.
PoP mining is a competitive endeavor in which miners compete to have their endorsement of the VeriBlock blockchain state included in the earliest possible Bitcoin block.
Getting Started
- Download the latest NodeCore software suite from the VeriBlock Github repository and extract the contents of the package.
- Follow the instructions at NodeCore QuickStart to start a local instance of NodeCore. For PoP mining to be successful, the local NodeCore instance must be fully synced with the VeriBlock network.
- From the nodecore-pop-{version}/bin folder, run the application:
- WINDOWS: Run nodecore-pop.bat
- LINUX/MAC: Run nodecore-pop. NOTE: If you are having trouble running nodecore-pop on Linux, you may need to make nodecore-pop executable: chmod a+x nodecore-pop
- On first execution of the application, you will be notified that the application creates a lightweight Bitcoin wallet and that you will be shown a set of "seed words" that can be used to recover your wallet later on. Acknowledge this by typing 'y' and pressing ENTER.
- Make note of the seed words. You will not be shown them again
- Acknowledge again that you have seen the seed words by typing 'y' and pressing ENTER.
The PoP miner acts as an SPV client of the Bitcoin network to maintain the internal wallet. On the first run of the PoP miner, the Bitcoin blockchain will be downloaded (this is nearly all just block headers and not full blocks).
- Once the blockchain download is completed, you are shown a Bitcoin address to send coins to in order to fund the internal wallet
- Fund the internal wallet by sending coins to the displayed address and wait for that transaction to be confirmed
When the miner is able to communicate with NodeCore, has downloaded the Bitcoin blockchain, and is sufficiently funded, you will see a message:
SUCCESS: PoP Miner: READY
Congratulations! You are ready to start mining!
Your First Mine
The PoP Miner is pre-configured with a default value for the transaction fee to use when creating Bitcoin transactions. It is expressed in satoshis per KB (1000 bytes) and defaults to 20,000. It is highly recommended that you assess the current Bitcoin transaction fee market and configure the miner with an appropriately competitive transaction fee.
- To configure the transaction fee, run the 'setconfig'. e.g. If you determine 30,000 satoshis/KB is a competitive transaction fee you would configure the miner by running:
setconfig bitcoin.fee.perkb 30000
Additional insight regarding transaction fees can be found in the FAQ section below, under the question "How do I set the BTC transaction fee?"
- To begin a mining operation, type 'mine' and press ENTER
A mining operation is variable in the amount of time that it takes to reach completion. The first several steps of getting publication data and submitting a Bitcoin transaction happen very quickly. You then have a period of waiting while that transaction waits to be confirmed in a Bitcoin block. Assuming your transaction fee is competitive enough to be included in the next block, you are waiting for that next Bitcoin block to be mined (on average, once every 10 minutes, though much longer times are not uncommon). Once the transaction confirms, you'll again have a rapid sequence of steps in which your transaction is proven to exist in the Bitcoin block and the proof-of-proof transaction is submitted to the VeriBlock blockchain.
At this point, the miner continues to listen as new Bitcoin blocks arrive and in the event a Bitcoin blockchain reorganization causes your endorsement transaction to be part of a different block, it will resubmit the proof-of-proof transaction.
Interacting with the Command-Line
The PoP miner provides several commands for configuring, interacting and assessing the state of your mining operations. A detailed explanation of each command can be found at PoP Miner CommandLine
PoP Mining Lifecycle
Current Actions
The WAIT and CONFIRM may take a while. Other steps should be fast.
Once the PoP Miner is done, there is nothing more for it to do, check HowTo_run_PoP_Miner#viewrecentrewards to see about rewards.
| Action | Duration | Description |
|---|---|---|
| READY | Operation has been initialized and is ready to start | |
| PUBLICATION_DATA | Getting the publication data from NodeCore | |
| TRANSACTION | Composing and submitting the Bitcoin transaction containing the PoP publication data | |
| WAIT | "a while" | Waiting and listening for new Bitcoin blocks that include the transaction |
| PROOF | Validating the merkle path of the transaction in the block | |
| CONTEXT | Accumulating Bitcoin block headers to provide enough context to NodeCore to maintain an unbroken SPV view of the Bitcoin blockchain | |
| SUBMIT | Submitting all required proofs of the Bitcoin transaction to NodeCore (NodeCore adds a PoP transaction to mempool) | |
| CONFIRM | maybe several hours | Waiting and listening for new Bitcoin blocks and transaction to confirm 20 times. Handles resubmission of PoP transaction to NodeCore if the Bitcoin blockchain should fork and previous block is no longer in the main branch. |
| DONE | Done with mining. Check HowTo_run_PoP_Miner#viewrecentrewards for upcoming rewards |
Expect this kind of flow in the log:
Note the the PoP Id (2aaef35f) given to each step.
Expect this flow: [2aaef35f] Mining operation current action: Waiting for transaction to be included in Bitcoin block [2aaef35f] Transaction seen in block [2aaef35f] Setting block header of proof [2aaef35f] Found transaction in Bitcoin block with header: [2aaef35f] Mining operation current action: Proving transaction included in Bitcoin block [2aaef35f] Found Merkle path to transaction: [2aaef35f] Mining operation current action: Building Bitcoin context [2aaef35f] Added 3 context headers ... [2aaef35f] Mining operation current action: Submitting completed PoP transaction [2aaef35f] Submitted PoP transaction: B9BC44D4E77CD5EE1E6B05B8154453EB436CC516C1DC9B9D3E22208AA2E3BC2E [2aaef35f] Mining operation current action: Confirming Bitcoin transaction [2aaef35f] New block added, checking confidence [2aaef35f] Mining operation current action: Done [2aaef35f] Mining operation is now: COMPLETE
Major Changes
v0.3.8
IMPORTANT! Bitcoin fee configuration changes from Fee per byte to Fee per kilobyte. The configuration property in the nc-pop.properties file has changed from bitcoin.fee.perbyte to bitcoin.fee.perkb. The configuration value should be 1000 times the previous per byte fee (Bitcoin 1 KB = 1000 Bytes).
The rationale for this decision is that if we assume a normal PoP transaction has a size of ~285 bytes, a +1 increase in the fee per byte results in a 285 Satoshi increase in the final fee (+1 satoshi per byte * 285 bytes). Whereas a +1 increase in the fee per kilobyte results in a "0.285 Satoshi" increase in the final fee (+1 satoshi per kb * 0.285 kb). The net effect is a much finer granularity of control over the final fee.
Additional changes:
- The minimum transaction fee per kb of 1000 Satoshis / KB can be disabled by setting the configuration value bitcoin.minrelayfee.enabled=false. This should be used with extreme caution as it is possible transactions below this threshold are ignored by the Bitcoin network.
- The "change" address used in a PoP transaction will now be reused. Given the high volume of transactions we've seen from PoP miners, importing wallets was becoming prohibitive due to the large number of items (address keys) present in the filter.
v0.3.0
See: Mining_High_Noon#PoP_Miner_Update_for_High_Noon
Proof-of-proof transactions now take place on the Bitcoin MainNet and therefore spend BTC from your PoP miner's wallet.
Reference
VeriBlock "Rounds"
VeriBlock blocks are classified as belonging to one of four rounds. The pattern of rounds repeats every 20 blocks (ending with a block whose number is divisible by 20, e.g. blocks 65461-65480 is a set and 65481-65500 is the next set). The round classification within each 20 block set is illustrated below:
Each set of 20 contains just one Round 4 block, the last block, and is known as a "keystone".
ncpop.properties Reference
These properties can be set in the ncpop.properties file (in bin folder, located next to nodecore-pop.bat). If this file does not exist, it will be created the first time the miner is run.
These can also be seen from running the "listconfig" command, and set with the "setconfig" command.
| Config Key | Default Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| bitcoin.network | mainnet | |
| bitcoin.fee.max | 8000 | The maximum transaction fee for any given Bitcoin transaction |
| bitcoin.fee.perkb | 20000 | The Bitcoin transaction fee per kilobyte (1000 bytes) |
| nodecore.rpc.host | 127.0.0.1 | |
| nodecore.rpc.port | 10501 | |
| nodecore.rpc.ssl | false | |
| nodecore.rpc.password | ||
| nodecore.rpc.cert.chain.path | ||
| pop.cron.schedule | A schedule on which to mine, see below for further information | |
| auto.mine.round1 | false | Automatically mine whenever a new "Round 1" block is seen by NodeCore |
| auto.mine.round2 | false | Automatically mine whenever a new "Round 2" block is seen by NodeCore |
| auto.mine.round3 | false | Automatically mine whenever a new "Round 3" block is seen by NodeCore |
| auto.mine.round4 | false | Automatically mine whenever a new "Round 4" block is seen by NodeCore |
WARNING: It is not recommended to configure both the pop.cron.schedule and the auto.mine.roundN properties as it can result in too many unconfirmed transactions chained together.
PoP Cron Scheduler
Cron expressions are a compact format for expressing a recurring schedule. For help constructing an expression, visit an online tool, such as http://www.cronmaker.com/. An example schedule that would trigger a mine operation at :00 and :30 minutes every hour is below:
pop.cron.schedule=0 0/30 * * * ?
PoP Application Status Codes
Status of the PoP Miner
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| STARTED | |
| RUNNING | Will most often see this state |
| COMPLETE | |
| FAILED |
PoP Files
These are files within the \bin folder:
- bitcoinj.nodecore-pop.log - log file for BitcoinJ
- bitcoin-pop-testnet.spvchain
- bitcoin-pop-testnet.wallet --> Bitcoin wallet, this contains your BTC!
- ncpop.properties
- nodecore-pop --> start PoP Miner on linux
- nodecore-pop.bat --> start PoP Miner on windows
- veriblock.nodecore-pop.log --> log file for PoP. If you have errors with PoP mining, keep this file for troubleshooting
FAQ
Does the PoP Miner require BTC or tBTC?
BTC.
Previously the TestNet PoP Miner required tBTC (testnet BTC) during the "Mining Sunrise" phase.
After VBK MainNet launch, the VBK TestNet PoP Miner will again use BTC TestNet (tBTC), and the VBK MainNet PoP Miner will use BTC.
How can I see my PoP rewards?
See: PoP_Miner_Rewards
Do I need to run a full Bitcoin node?
No. The PoP Miner uses the bitcoinj library to embed a lightweight Bitcoin wallet (and SPV client), such that one does NOT need to run a full Bitcoin node.
Does the Bitcoin I send to my PoP Wallet need to be confirmed?
No. If the Bitcoin transaction with the deposit ends up being reverted, then the PoP transaction that depends on it just fails.
This also has the benefit of allowing PoP Mining immediately after a BTC deposit, without waiting for several confirmations.
How do I set the BTC transaction fee?
For "what should the BTC fee be", check: PoP_Miner_Rewards#What_should_the_tBTC_Tx_fee_be.3F. This section explains how to set the fee.
Either set it in the ncpop.properties file:
bitcoin.fee.max=8000 bitcoin.fee.perkb=20000
Or set it via the 'setconfig' command:
setconfig bitcoin.fee.perkb 20000 setconfig bitcoin.fee.max 8000
Note: Make sure to also set 'bitcoin.fee.max'. This is the absolute maximum you're willing to allow the final transaction fee to be. An average transaction may be around 300 bytes (or, 0.3 KB), so, generally the configured maximum should be at least (0.3 KB x bitcoin.fee.perkb).
You can see the current fee by running the 'listconfig' command (HowTo_run_PoP_Miner#listconfig)
How to set up a cron schedule for mining
Properties file is:
pop.cron.schedule=0 0/30 * * * ?
Checkout http://www.cronmaker.com/ for help building the expression
How to auto-mine every Nth round?
The PoP Miner can mine every Nth round. See: HowTo_run_PoP_Miner#VeriBlock_.22Rounds.22
Within a 20 block window:
- round4 = every 20th block, i.e. keystone (highest reward)
- round1 = 1,4,7,10,13,16,19
- round2 = 2,5,8,11,14,17
- round3 = 3,6,9,12,15,18
Set the ncpop.properties file:
auto.mine.round4=true
Note if you wanted different fees for different rounds, you could have multiple miners run. Miner A could run rounds 1-3 at Fee X, Miner B could run round 4 at fee Y.
Note, it is advised to not use this and the cron expression - pick one or the other.
Can I run multiple PoP Miners?
For most people you should not need to. Whereas a PoW Miner (either GPU or CPU) is limited by Hardware and processing power and electricity - i.e. run 10 PoW miners for 10x more likely chance of getting a reward - a PoP miner is limited by BTC for the transaction fee.
It will be easier for someone to manage a single instance of the PoP miner, but mine more frequently by constantly feeding it BTC for the TX fees.
BUT... if you do want to run multiple instances:
- Option A: You'll need to put them in separate folders on the machine and use different BitcoinJ wallets. Do not run the multiple instances of the same executable with the same wallet. Each copy will have it's own set of files: HowTo_run_PoP_Miner#PoP_Files
- Option B: You can also run multiple instances on different machines, all pointed to the same remote NodeCore instance by setting the ncpop.properties 'nodecore.rpc.host=<remote_IP_Here>' (also see [[1]] to set up NodeCore to accept connections from the remote PoP miner)
Can I import a previous BTC wallet?
Yes, just copy bin\bitcoin-pop-*.wallet.
This will carry over the BTC balance.
Troubleshooting
"PoP Miner not ready" warning
| Warning | Solution |
|---|---|
| PoP wallet does not contain sufficient funds | Send Bitcoins to your PoP BTC wallet address. Run commands showbitcoinbalance (it should be greater than zero), and sendbitcointoaddress. |
| Could not connect to NodeCore | Ensure an instance of NodeCore is running, and you could connect to it from the NC_CLI and run getinfo |
| Bitcoin blockchain is not downloaded | Ensure the ncpop.properties file has a line for bitcoin.network=testnet, and wait for the blockchain to download. There should be a message like "Blockchain downloading: 95%". |
| Bitcoin service is not ready | Check the other warnings. There should be a message like "SUCCESS: Bitcoin service is ready". |
I do not have any bitcoin
For mainnet, acquire Bitcoin via normal means.
For testnet, use a faucet to get test bitcoin. You can find a list of popular Bitcoin testnet faucets here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Testnet#Faucets.
Mining operation action took longer than expected. Operation can be resubmitted.
If you get an error, then try running the resubmit command: PoP_Miner_CommandLine#resubmit
ERROR: Mining operation action took longer than expected. Operation can be resubmitted.
PoP Transaction must complete within a certain period of time to remain relevant, and hence it times out. For example, if there's an abnormally high amount of context headers, that may cause a timeout.
Why does the BTC address change each time I run the showAddress command?
Bitcoin addresses are just a representation of the public key from a public/private key pair. We generate new key pairs every time you run the `showAddress` command. The PoP Miner manages these addresses for you, so you don't have to worry about them. As a privacy best practice, it's best to always use a new address (key pair) every time you receive a payment. The reason the PoP miner (or any Bitcoin wallet) generates a new address each time you receive a payment is for privacy reasons only, because if you use the same address for many transactions, the peers you traded with will be able to identify which other transactions you were involved in, and your identity will be easier to tie to the address. [Credit: A sentence or two for this answer may come from an unknown tech source]
Failed to get PoP publication data from NodeCore
This kind of error implies that NodeCore is not ready.
Try to connect to the NC instance with the NC_CLI and run getinfo:
Failed to get PoP publication data from NodeCore: Status{code=DEADLINE_EXCEEDED, description=deadline exceeded after 14999412514ns, cause=null}
Can you run NC_CLI getinfo?
- Yes --> Then try to repeat the PoP miner operation.
- No --> Troubleshoot NodeCore HowTo_run_NodeCore
