NOMP

Node Open Mining Portal

This portal is an extremely efficient, highly scalable, all-in-one, easy to setup cryptocurrency mining pool written entirely in Node.js. It contains a stratum poolserver, reward/payment/share processor (not yet completed), and front-end website (not yet completed).

Features

• For the pool server it uses the highly efficient node-stratum module which supports vardiff, POW & POS, transaction messages, anti-DDoS, IP banning, several hashing algorithms.

• The portal has an MPOS compatibility mode so that the it can function as a drop-in-replacement for python-stratum-mining. This mode can be enabled in the configuration and will insert shares into a MySQL database in the format which MPOS expects.

• Multi-pool ability - this software was built from the ground up to run with multiple coins simultaneously (which can have different properties and hashing algorithms). It can be used to create a pool for a single coin or for multiple coins at once. The pools use clustering to load balance across multiple CPU cores.

• For reward/payment processing, shares are inserted into Redis (a fast NoSQL key/value store). The PROP (proportional) reward system is used. Each and every share will be rewarded - even for rounds resulting in orphaned blocks.

• This portal does not have user accounts/logins/registrations. Instead, miners simply use their coin address for stratum authentication. A minimalistic HTML5 front-end connects to the portals statistics API to display stats from from each pool such as connected miners, network/pool difficulty/hash rate, etc.

Planned Features

• To knock down the barrier to entry for cryptocurrency and mining for those not programmers or tech-origiented, instead of the "help" page on the website being being confusing for non-techies (when most people see a black command prompt screen they run away screaming), there will be a simple "Download NOMP Desktop App" to get started mining immediately for your platform (use javascript to detect platform and default them to the correct one). I will create this app using C# + Mono so runs with ease on all platforms, and it will have its own github repo that NOMP links to. So a pool operator does a git clone --recursive on NOMP repo, it will download NOMP app executables for each platform. There will be a nomp.ini file paired with the executable which the pool operator configures to user their NOMP pool's API url. When the NOMP portal initiates creates a zip for each platform with the nomp.ini inside. When user's download the app, it auto-connects to the NOMP pool API to get available coins along with the version-byte for each coin so the app can securely generate a local private key and valid address to mine with. The app pill prompt printing the private key to paper and also enforce a STRONG (uncrackable) password encryption on the file. The app will scan their system to get the appropriate mining software - run in background - parse the gibberish (to a noob) output into something that makes sense. It will also prompt them to download the coins wallet software and import their private key. When using the app they can choose a unique username that is used with stratum authentication like "zone117x.mfsm1ckZKTTjDz94KonZZsbZnAbm1UV4BF", so that on a NOMP mobile app, a user can enter in the NOMP pool and their username in order to see how their mining rig is doing since the API will report stats back for the address such as hashrate and balance.

• To reduce variance for pools just starting out which have little to no hashing power a feature is planned which will allow your own pool to connect upstream to a larger pool server. It will request work from the larger pool then redistribute the work to our own connected miners.

• Automated switching of connected miners to different pools/coins is also easily done due to the multi-pool architecture of this software. The switching can be controlled using a coin profitability API such as CoinChoose.com or CoinWarz.com (or calculated locally using daemon-reported network difficulties and exchange APIs).

Security

NOMP has some implicit security advantages for pool operators and miners:

• Without a registration/login system, non-security-oriented miners reusing passwords across pools is no longer a concern.
• Automated payouts by default and pool profits are sent to another address so pool wallets aren't plump with coins - giving hackers little reward and keeping your pool from being a target.
• Miners can notice lack of automated payments as a possible early warning sign that an operator is about to run off with their coins.

Community / Support

For support and general discussion join IRC #nomp: https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#nomp

For development discussion join #nomp-dev: https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#nomp-dev

Having problems getting the portal running due to some module dependency error? It's probably because you didn't follow the instructions in this README. Please read the usage instructions including requirements and downloading/installing. If you've followed the instructions completely and are still having problems then open an issue here on github or join our #nomp IRC channel and explain your problem :).

If your pool uses NOMP let us know and we will list your website here.

Usage

Requirements

• Coin daemon(s) (find the coin's repo and build latest version from source)
• Node.js v0.10+ (follow these installation instructions)
• Redis key-value store v2.6+ (follow these instructions)

1) Downloading & Installing

Clone the repository and run npm update for all the dependencies to be installed:

git clone https://github.com/zone117x/node-stratum-portal.git
npm update

2) Configuration

Portal config

Inside the config.json file, ensure the default configuration will work for your environment.

Explanation for each field:

{
    /* Specifies the level of log output verbosity. Anything more severy than the level specified
       will also be logged. */
    "logLevel": "debug", //or "warning", "error"
    
    /* By default 'forks' is set to "auto" which will spawn one process/fork/worker for each CPU
       core in your system. Each of these workers will run a separate instance of your pool(s),
       and the kernel will load balance miners using these forks. Optionally, the 'forks' field
       can be a number for how many forks will be spawned. */
    "clustering": {
        "enabled": true,
        "forks": "auto"
    },
    
    /* With this enabled, the master process will start listening on the configured port for
       messages from the 'scripts/blockNotify.js' script which your coin daemons can be configured
       to run when a new block is available. When a blocknotify message is received, the master
       process uses IPC (inter-process communication) to notify each worker process about the
       message. Each worker process then sends the message to the appropriate coin pool. See
       "Setting up blocknotify" below to set up your daemon to use this feature. */
    "blockNotifyListener": {
        "enabled": true,
        "port": 8117,
        "password": "test"
    },
    
    /* This is the front-end. Its not finished. When it is finished, this comment will say so. */
    "website": {
        "enabled": true,
        "port": 80,
        "liveStats": true
    }
}

Coin config

Inside the coins directory, ensure a json file exists for your coin. If it does not you will have to create it. Here is an example of the required fields:

{
    "name": "Litecoin",
    "symbol": "ltc",
    "algorithm": "scrypt", //or "sha256", "scrypt-jane", "quark", "x11"
    "reward": "POW", //or "POS"
    "txMessages": false //or true
}

Pool config

Take a look at the example json file inside the pool_configs directory. Rename it to yourcoin.json and change the example fields to fit your setup.

Description of options:

{
    "disabled": false, //Set this to true and a pool will not be created from this config file
    "coin": "litecoin.json", //Reference to coin config file in 'coins' directory


    /* This determines what to do with submitted shares (and stratum worker authentication).
       You have two options: 
        1) Enable internal and disable mpos = this portal to handle all share payments.
        2) Enable mpos and disable internal = shares will be inserted into MySQL database
           for MPOS to process. */
    "shareProcessing": {

        "internal": {
            "enabled": true,

            /* When workers connect, to receive payments, their address must be used as the worker
               name. If this option is true, on worker authentication, their address will be
               verified via a validateaddress API call to the daemon. Miners with invalid addresses
               will be rejected. */
            "validateWorkerAddress": true,

            /* Every this many seconds get submitted blocks from redis, use daemon RPC to check
               their confirmation status, if confirmed then get shares from redis that contributed
               to block and send out payments. */
            "paymentInterval": 30,

            /* Minimum number of coins that a miner must earn before sending payment. Typically,
               a higher minimum means less transactions fees (you profit more) but miners see
               payments less frequently (they dislike). Opposite for a lower minimum payment. */
            "minimumPayment": 0.001,

            /* Minimum number of coins to keep in pool wallet. It is recommended to deposit at
               at least this many coins into the pool wallet when first starting the pool. */
            "minimumReserve": 10,

            /* (2% default) What percent fee your pool takes from the block reward. */
            "feePercent": 0.02,

            /* Your address that receives pool revenue from fees */
            "feeReceiveAddress": "LZz44iyF4zLCXJTU8RxztyyJZBntdS6fvv",

            /* How many coins from fee revenue must accumulate on top of the minimum reserve amount
               in order to trigger withdrawal to fee address. The higher this threshold, the less of
               your profit goes to transactions fees. */
            "feeWithdrawalThreshold": 5,

            /* This daemon is used to send out payments. It MUST be for the daemon that owns the
               configured 'address' that receives the block rewards, otherwise the daemon will not
               be able to confirm blocks or send out payments. */
            "daemon": {
                "host": "localhost",
                "port": 19332,
                "user": "litecoinrpc",
                "password": "testnet"
            },

            /* Redis database used for storing share and block submission data. */
            "redis": {
                "host": "localhost",
                "port": 6379
            }
        },

        "mpos": { //Enabled this and shares will be inserted into share table in a MySQL database
            "enabled": false,
            "host": "localhost", //MySQL db host
            "port": 3306, //MySQL db port
            "user": "me", //MySQL db user
            "password": "mypass", //MySQL db password
            "database": "ltc", //MySQL db database name

            /* For when miner's authenticate: set to "password" for both worker name and password to
               be checked for in the database, set to "worker" for only work name to be checked, or
               don't use this option (set to "none") for no auth checks */
            "stratumAuth": "password"
        }
    },

    "address": "mi4iBXbBsydtcc5yFmsff2zCFVX4XG7qJc", //Address to where block rewards are given

    "blockRefreshInterval": 1000, //How often to poll RPC daemons for new blocks, in milliseconds

    //instanceId: 37, //Recommend not using this because a crypto-random one will be generated

    /* Some attackers will create thousands of workers that use up all available socket connections,
       usually the workers are zombies and don't submit shares after connecting. This feature
       detects those and disconnects them. */
    "connectionTimeout": 600, //Remove workers that haven't been in contact for this many seconds

    /* If a worker is submitting a high threshold of invalid shares we can temporarily ban them
       to reduce system/network load. Also useful to fight against flooding attacks. */
    "banning": {
        "enabled": true,
        "time": 600, //How many seconds to ban worker for
        "invalidPercent": 50, //What percent of invalid shares triggers ban
        "checkThreshold": 500, //Check invalid percent when this many shares have been submitted
        "purgeInterval": 300 //Every this many seconds clear out the list of old bans
    },

    /* Each pool can have as many ports for your miners to connect to as you wish. Each port can
       be configured to use its own pool difficulty and variable difficulty settings. varDiff is
       optional and will only be used for the ports you configure it for. */
    "ports": {
        "3032": { //A port for your miners to connect to
            "diff": 32, //the pool difficulty for this port

            /* Variable difficulty is a feature that will automatically adjust difficulty for
               individual miners based on their hashrate in order to lower networking overhead */
            "varDiff": {
                "minDiff": 8, //Minimum difficulty
                "maxDiff": 512, //Network difficulty will be used if it is lower than this
                "targetTime": 15, //Try to get 1 share per this many seconds
                "retargetTime": 90, //Check to see if we should retarget every this many seconds
                "variancePercent": 30 //Allow time to very this % from target without retargeting
            }
        },
        "3256": { //Another port for your miners to connect to, this port does not use varDiff
            "diff": 256 //The pool difficulty
        }
    },


    /* Recommended to have at least two daemon instances running in case one drops out-of-sync
       or offline. For redundancy, all instances will be polled for block/transaction updates
       and be used for submitting blocks. */
    "daemons": [
        {   //Main daemon instance
            "host": "localhost",
            "port": 19332,
            "user": "litecoinrpc",
            "password": "testnet"
        },
        {   //Backup daemon instance
            "host": "localhost",
            "port": 19344,
            "user": "litecoinrpc",
            "password": "testnet"
        }
    ],


    /* This allows the pool to connect to the daemon as a node peer to recieve block updates.
       It may be the most efficient way to get block updates (faster than polling, less
       intensive than blocknotify script). However its still under development (not yet working). */
    "p2p": {
        "enabled": false,
        "host": "localhost",
        "port": 19333,

        /* Magic value is different for main/testnet and for each coin. It is found in the daemon
           source code as the pchMessageStart variable.
           For example, litecoin mainnet magic: http://git.io/Bi8YFw
           And for litecoin testnet magic: http://git.io/NXBYJA
         */
        "magic": "fcc1b7dc",

        //Found in src as the PROTOCOL_VERSION variable, for example: http://git.io/KjuCrw
        "protocolVersion": 70002,
    }
}

You can create as many of these pool config files as you want (such as one pool per coin you which to operate). If you are creating multiple pools, ensure that they have unique stratum ports.

For more information on these configuration options see the pool module documentation

[Optional, recommended] Setting up blocknotify

1. In config.json set the port and password for blockNotifyListener
2. In your daemon conf file set the blocknotify command to use:

node [path to scripts/blockNotify.js] [listener host]:[listener port] [listener password] [coin name in config] %s

Example: inside dogecoin.conf add the line

blocknotify="node scripts/blockNotify.js localhost:8117 mySuperSecurePassword dogecoin %s"

3) Start the portal

node init.js

Optional enhancements for your awesome new mining pool server setup:

• Use something like forever to keep the node script running in case the master process crashes.
• Use something like redis-commander to have a nice GUI for exploring your redis database.
• Use something like logrotator to rotate log output from NOMP.

Donations

To support development of this project feel free to donate :)

BTC: 1KRotMnQpxu3sePQnsVLRy3EraRFYfJQFR

Credits

• vekexasia - co-developer & great tester
• TheSeven - answering an absurd amount of my questions and being a very helpful and king gentleman
• Those that contributed to node-stratum

License

Released under the GNU General Public License v2

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html