Start DKG Node

It is advised launching the tool with a Docker compose as it is the most convenient way and only requires to have Docker installed. The team builds a Docker image with every release of the tool.

Configuration

All of the necessary configuration information can be provided via command line parameters, but a YAML config file is often the most convenient way, thus it's what this documentation page will be discussing.

A good way to manage all the necessary files is to store them in a single folder (in this case ssv-dkg-data), together with the operator.yaml configuration file.

If you chose to setup your SSV node with the SSV Stack repository, your should create ssv-dkg-data inside of the existing ssv-stack directory.

The final result should look like so:

ssv@localhost:~/# tree ssv-dkg-data
ssv-dkg-data
├── encrypted_private_key.json
├── operator.yaml
└── password

1 directories, 3 files

A typical operator.yaml configuration file would look like this:

operator.yaml

privKey: ./data/encrypted_private_key.json
privKeyPassword: ./data/password
operatorID: <YOUR_OPERATOR_ID>
port: 3030
logLevel: info
logFormat: json
logLevelFormat: capitalColor
logFilePath: ./data/debug.log
outputPath: ./data/output
ethEndpointURL: http://ethnode:8545 #HTTP Address of Execution Node
# serverTLSCertPath: ./data/ssl/tls.crt #Only enable if manually generated TLS certificate
# serverTLSKeyPath: ./data/ssl/tls.key #Only enable if manually generated TLS key

DKG v3.0.0 supports Multisig addresses. Confirmation of Multisig addresses is done on Execution layer, so you need to add ethEndpointURL to your operator.yaml config. Otherwise, you won't be able to participate in DKG ceremonies involving Multisig addresses.

In the config file above, ./data/ represents the container's shared volume created by the docker itself with the -v or volumes option. You don't need to create data directory.

Start SSV-DKG Node

SSV Stack

If you did set up SSV node with the SSV Stack repository, you can simply add DKG to your existing setup.

1. Your ssv-dkg-data directory should be inside of the ssv-stack.

2. Edit the docker-compose.yaml file that you already have.

3. Add the following content at the end of your file, but before the networks: part

  ssv-dkg:  
    image: ssvlabs/ssv-dkg:latest
    pull_policy: always
    restart: "unless-stopped"
    container_name: ssv-dkg
    networks:
      - local-docker
    volumes:
      - ./ssv-dkg-data:/ssv-dkg/data
    ports:
      - 3030:3030/tcp
    command:
      ["start-operator", "--configPath", "./data/operator.yaml"]
      
# You should leave "networks: ..." below this

1. Start your DKG with the command sudo docker compose up ssv-dkg

This command will keep the terminal busy, showing the container's logs. It is useful to make sure that the tool start up sequence runs correctly.

You can detach the terminal at any time by hitting Ctrl-c key combination, or closing the terminal itself. The tool will be stopped, but it will restart automatically, thanks to the restart: "unless-stopped" startup parameter.

If you are sure that the tool works and don't care about the logs — you can use -d parameter sudo docker compose up -d ssv-dkg.

docker-compose

To start and manage the DKG tool in the most convenient way, it is advised to use docker-compose.

This section assumes that all the necessary files (encrypted_private_key.json, operator.yaml, password) are under the same folder. Just make sure to substitute <PATH_TO_FOLDER_WITH_CONFIG_FILES> with the actual folder containing all the files (e.g. ~/ssv-stack/ssv-dkg-data/).

Below is an example of a docker-compose file:

docker-compose.yaml

services:
  ssv-dkg:
    image: ssvlabs/ssv-dkg:latest
    pull_policy: always
    restart: "unless-stopped"
    container_name: ssv-dkg
    volumes:
      - <PATH_TO_FOLDER_WITH_CONFIG_FILE>:/ssv-dkg/data
    ports:
      - 3030:3030/tcp
    command:
      ["start-operator", "--configPath", "./data/operator.yaml"]
    networks:
      - [local-docker]

You can, of course, change the configuration above to one that suits you better, just be mindful about changing the path references in the docker command and in the operator.yaml file as well. The two need to be consistent with each other.

In order to launch the container, you would need to run this command:

docker compose up

This command will keep the terminal busy, showing the container's logs. It is useful to make sure that the tool start up sequence runs correctly.

You can detach the terminal at any time by hitting Ctrl-c key combination, or closing the terminal itself. The tool will be stopped, but it will restart automatically, thanks to the restart: "unless-stopped" startup parameter.

If you are sure that the tool works and don't care about the logs — you can use -d parameter sudo docker compose up -d.

Docker run

Under the assumption that all the necessary files (encrypted_private_key.json, operator.yaml, password) are under the same folder (represented below with <PATH_TO_FOLDER_WITH_CONFIG_FILES>) you can run the tool using the command below:

sudo docker run --restart unless-stopped --name ssv-dkg -p 3030:3030 -v <PATH_TO_FOLDER_WITH_CONFIG_FILE>:/ssv-dkg/data -it "ssvlabs/ssv-dkg:latest" start-operator --configPath ./data/operator.yaml

Just make sure to substitute <PATH_TO_FOLDER_WITH_CONFIG_FILES> with the actual folder containing all the files (e.g. /home/user/ssv-dkg-data or $(pwd)if you run the command from that directory).

You can, of course, change the configuration above to one that suits you better, just be mindful about changing the path references in the docker command and in the operator.yaml file as well. The two need to be consistent with each other.

This command will keep the terminal busy, showing the container's logs. It is useful to make sure that the tool start up sequence runs correctly.

You can detach the terminal at any time by hitting Ctrl-c key combination, or closing the terminal itself. The tool will be stopped, but it will restart automatically, thanks to the --restart unless-stopped startup parameter.

If you are sure that the tool works, and don't care about the logs, you can add the -d parameter right after docker run.

Build from Source

A prerequisite for this is to have go version 1.22 installed on the system, and an optional requirement is to have the make tool installed as well (alternatively you could run the corresponding command defined in the Makefile).

Clone repository

Clone the ssv-dkg repository in your local machine:

git clone [e-mail]:ssvlabs/ssv-dkg.git

Build

From the project's root folder, run the following command:

make install

SSL certificate

Launching the DKG tool as a Docker container has the advantage of automatically creating and managing SSL certificate. If you decide to build it from source, you will have to do this yourself.

But don't worry, the entry-point.sh script in the repository is what is used by the Docker container, you could use that as an example for how to create an SSL certificate for your DKG node. For example:

mkdir ssl
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -sha256 -days 3650 -nodes -keyout "tls.key" -out "tls.crt" -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=localhost, Inc./CN=localhost"

Launch with command line parameters

To run the DKG tool as an operator, you can launch the following command with the appropriate values to each parameter:

ssv-dkg start-operator \
            --privKey ./operator-config/encrypted_private_key.json  \
            --privKeyPassword ./operator-config/password \
            --operatorID <YOUR_OPERATOR_ID> \
            --port 3030 \
            --logLevel info \
            --logFormat json \
            --logLevelFormat capitalColor \
            --logFilePath ./operator-config/debug.log \
            --outputPath ./operator-config/output \
            --serverTLSCertPath ./operator-config/ssl/tls.crt \
            --serverTLSKeyPath ./operator-config/ssl/tls.key \
            --ethEndpointURL http://ethnode:8545

Here's an explanation of each parameter:

Argument	Type	Description
--privKey	string	Path to private key of ssv operator
--port	int	Port for listening messages (default: 3030)
--privKeyPassword	string	Path to password file to decrypt the key
--operatorID	int	An integer, representing the ID of the operator, registered on the SSV network
--logLevel	debug | info | warning | error | critical	Logger's log level (default: debug)
--logFormat	json | console	Logger's encoding (default: json)
--logLevelFormat	capitalColor | capital | lowercase	Logger's level format (default: capitalColor)
--logFilePath	string	Path to file where logs should be written (default: ./data/debug.log)
--outputPath	string	Path to store results (default ./output)
--serverTLSCertPath	string	Path to server TLS certificate (default: ./ssl/tls.crt)
--serverTLSKeyPath	string	Path to server TLS private key (default: ./ssl/tls.key)
--ethEndpointURL	string	Ethereum node endpoint URL (default: http://127.0.0.1:8545)

Launch with YAML config file

It is also possible to use YAML configuration file, just as it was shown in the Configuration section above.

Then the tool can be launched from the root folder, by running this command:

ssv-dkg start-operator --configPath ./operator-config/operator.yaml

If the --configPath parameter is not provided, ssv-dkg will be looking for a file named config.yaml in ./config/ folder at the same root as the binary (i.e. ./config/config.yaml)

When you set up your firewall on your DKG node machine, make sure to expose the port you set in the configuration (and Docker container creation command, if running on Docker). The default is 3030.