The network setup user experience

[ChihChengLiang]

What is wrong?

This task addresses how we setup up a testnet. Inspired by the Nimbus testnet, the proposed general experience looks like this:

$ mkdir /tmp/testnet
$ cd /tmp/testnet
$ trinity-beacon testnet

Generating 400 validator key pairs
Generating genesis state, setting genesis time 1 min later.
Moving 200 validators' private keys under Alice's control
Moving 200 validators' private keys under Bob's control

You can now run Alice and Bob with

    trinity-beacon --trinity-root-dir=/tmp/testnet/alice
    trinity-beacon --trinity-root-dir=/tmp/testnet/bob

$ trinity-beacon --trinity-root-dir=/tmp/testnet/alice
... Starting Alice

$ # In another terminal
$ trinity-beacon --trinity-root-dir=/tmp/testnet/bob
... Starting Bob

How can it be fixed

trinity-beacon testnet is a BaseMainProcessPlugin that does the following jobs

• If the directory is non-empty, exits. Otherwise,

• mkdir keys, generate many, say 400, key pairs

• write genesis_state.yaml

• mkdir alice and bob, these are the trinity_root_dir for them

• distribute keys to Alice and Bob

• arguments

  • --num: number of validators
  • --genesis-delay: number seconds before the genesis