2.1 KiB
Run your own (super) lightweight node
In addition to providing command-line tooling that goes cryptographic verification on all the data your receive from the node, we have implemented a proxy mode, that allows you to run a super lightweight node. It does not follow the chain on every block or even every header, but only as needed. But still providing the same security as running a full non-validator node on your local machine.
Basically, it runs as a proxy that exposes the same rpc interface as the full node and connects to a (potentially untrusted) full node. Every response is cryptographically verified before being passed through, returning an error if it doesn't match.
You can expect 2 rpc calls for every query plus <= 1 query for each validator set change. Going offline for a while allows you to verify multiple validator set changes with one call. Cuz at 1 block/sec and 1000 tx/block, it just doesn't make sense to run a full node just to get security
Setup
Just initialize your client with the proper validator set as in the README
$ export BCHOME=~/.lightnode
$ basecli init --node tcp://<host>:<port> --chain-id <chain>
Running
$ basecli proxy --serve tcp://localhost:7890
...
curl localhost:7890/status
curl localhost:7890/block\?height=20
You can even subscribe to events over websockets and they are all verified before passing them though. Though if you want every block, you might as well run a full (nonvalidating) node.
Seeds
Every time the validator set changes, the light node verifies if it is legal,
and then creates a seed at that point. These "seeds" are verified checkpoints
that we can trace any proof back to, starting with one on init.
To make sure you are based on the most recent header, you can run:
basecli seeds update
basecli seeds show
Feedback
This is the first release of basecli and the light-weight proxy. It is secure, but may not be useful for your workflow. Please try it out and open github issues for any enhancements or bugs you find. I am aiming to make this a very useful tool by tendermint 0.11, for which I need community feedback.