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Kava Node Setup Guide

This guide presents you the Kava Node setup for Mainnet.

Prerequisites​

Storage​

The monthly storage requirements for a node are as follows. These are estimated values based on experience, but should serve as a good guide.

  • An archival node (pruning = "nothing") grows at a rate of ~100 GB per month Current total disk usage is 6TB, so a larger disk would be necessary.
  • A full pruning node (pruning = "everything") grows at a rate of ~5 GB per month
  • A default pruning node (pruning = “default”) grows at a rate of ~25 GB per month

Memory​

The minimum memory requirements for a node are as follows. These are estimated values based on experience, but should serve as a good guide.

  • An archival node (pruning = "nothing") should have at least 128GB of dedicated memory (256GB is optimal to avoid possible OOM errors due to other system utilization)
  • A full pruning node (pruning = "everything") should have at least 64GB of dedicated memory
  • A default pruning node (pruning = “default”) should have at least 64GB of dedicated memory

Install Kava​

Mainnet​

git clone https://github.com/kava-labs/kava
cd kava
git checkout [release tag]
make install

#verify versions
kava version --long

Setup Kava Node​

Initialize Kava Config​

kava init [your_moniker_name] --chain-id kava_2222-10
kava tendermint unsafe-reset-all --home $HOME/.kava
cd $HOME/.kava/config
rm genesis.json

Setup the Genesis File​

wget https://kava-genesis-files.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/kava_2222-10/genesis.json

Edit $HOME/.kava/config/config.toml to add the following persistent peers.

Mainnet​

persistent_peers = "2a15d9c39eea97b4cf00480b45d4ea32a2e173d0@94.130.78.22:26656,5a933891627e8bde0c4bd0b43c9f99b706e520a2@141.95.99.214:11656,ab3064c37d406245fa2d6e6109395518e8ac8a4c@95.111.255.148:26656,41d88639239c55fd37279d24df507238e1c417ea@85.237.192.104:26656,b23050c89f8cb2f4099688b2bcd60f49b15f41d1@95.214.53.217:26656,d5db8898d40054c07442f3364b32f7fac2752f5e@188.34.178.92:26656,fc34d9a3aff6026a3dbd531a96a50680df61dd91@50.116.3.21:26656,50e4cad7d5e28f7b6495168f92e12bf810e293fd@142.132.152.187:10856,6885971cdb724fa93034fb9e6a11113a6f555d2a@15.235.53.92:11656,7b5a2b519cb5a7d70f0fc5842829d4cce1262585@65.108.121.153:26656,51cfccb07d5a45efdf98d005159c01f0656751ad@54.165.27.59:26656,f7c894901f450b92614fd051d10854d168ec30b5@65.21.94.20:10856,7393ed21b6dc516fcc0ad33c4fe42bdd295d2795@18.206.217.244:26656,508d7ec33c7f3c9c479ca9b845cadbbefee670f7@162.55.133.237:21656,d68410115d7681196651e7fece9e4cafc0456856@3.0.206.176:26656,4cfdd459466cfd492d66b7a5fe26cde96e35d735@182.48.203.7:26656,63ec88e98fc267fb82fa62a51ca5c0a2c115d749@51.38.53.4:27656,ebc272824924ea1a27ea3183dd0b9ba713494f83@185.16.39.172:26656,4efe3caf3b8c0ca197d40756f3bb1bd6081bf18d@51.210.220.20:36656,c124ce0b508e8b9ed1c5b6957f362225659b5343@136.243.248.185:26656,82588f011491c6100d922d133f52fc23460b9231@95.217.91.233:26656,8b5c4a890c8ae7efbbe3360af71be1c3c3a9e12e@121.78.241.68:46656,ce203135031ab08fc0ddff5bd13806e25f21b91d@3.115.125.121:26656,dcd6026ebe5586ed0e94751090f8290b5997666b@5.189.165.172:26656,bc61c26018f65e54232b7e9e99bf7599dffeb78b@13.56.56.180:26656"\\
seeds = "b334e291ac361f9a1cf253d290047700b488b679@52.2.147.96:26656"

Add minimum gas prices into app.toml

minimum-gas-prices = "0.025ukava;1000000000akava"

Do the rest of the port configuration as desired; The EVM configuration and ports can be found in the app.toml under section "EVM Configuration"

Setting Up Your Pruning Node​

To setup a pruning node, you can get started using one of the following:

  • Nodies provides snapshots hosted in multiple regions for faster access. Download the latest pruned goleveldb snapshot using aria2c (detailed guide here):
### Options: 'de' for Europe, 'use' for US, 'sgp' for Asia
export REGION=de

aria2c -s 10 -x 10 https://download.nodies.org/download/latest/snapshot/${REGION}/kava/mainnet/pruned
  • Go to Quicksync and download the .tar pruned snapshot file
  • Sync without the pruned snapshot file

Please note that Quicksync’s and Nodies' pruned snapshots should be run using Goleveldb flag for your setup.

Setting Up Your Archival Node​

To setup an archival node, you must download the correct version of the kava node data and sync a node:

  • Nodies provides snapshots hosted in multiple regions for faster access. Download the latest archive rocksdb snapshot using aria2c (detailed guide here):
### Options: 'de' for Europe, 'use' for US, 'sgp' for Asia
export REGION=de

aria2c -s 10 -x 10 https://download.nodies.org/download/latest/snapshot/${REGION}/kava/mainnet/archive
  • Go to Quicksync and download the archive .tar snapshot file to be used (please note that you should only download this file once)
  • Ensure you are using the correct network (current mainnet=kava_2222-10)

Please ensure you compile your archive node with rocksdb flag for your setup.

Creating a New Data Folder Using Node Tar File​

Requirements:
  • Ensure the kava process is not running
  • Disk large enough for the data directory, which is around 6TB uncompressed. Ideally 12TB for room for growth
  • Zst compression library:
sudo apt-get install zstd

Steps:​

  1. Downloading the tar file
  • Example using aria2c:
aria2c --continue -x16 --file-allocation=falloc
  1. Extract the tar file
tar -I unzstd -xvf - -C /path/to/your/kava/data
  1. Replace data directory in your kava directory with the extracted data if necessary.

Compiling Kava with RocksDB Support​

The provided quicksync archive snapshot is from a Kava mainnet node that uses RocksDB as the database backend. RocksDB is used as a more efficient and performant choice for Kava’s production infrastructure than the default GolevelDB database backend.

Config Recommendations​

  1. Set lazy loading on in the app.toml file for faster initial load (optional)
iavl-lazy-loading = true
  1. Ensure rocksdb is enabled in the config.toml file
db_backend = "rocksdb"

Install RocksDB on your system​

Install RocksDB on your machine, use version v8.1.1

Compiling Kava binary with RocksDB flag​

  • Check out Kava mainnet version source code
  • Change into that directory
  • Run make install COSMOS_BUILD_OPTIONS=rocksdb

Building Kava using Docker Images​

If you are using docker to build kava using rocksdb please utilize the docker file in your configuration.

Syncing Your Node​

To sync your node, you will use systemd, which manages the Kava daemon and automatically restarts it in case of failure. To use systemd, you will create a service file. Be sure to replace <your_user> with the user on your server:

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/kava.service > /dev/null <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Kava daemon
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=<your_user>
ExecStart=/home/<your_user>/go/bin/kava start
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=4096

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

To start syncing:​

# Start the node
sudo systemctl enable kava
sudo systemctl start kava

To check on the status of syncing:​

kava status --log_format json | jq '.sync_info'

This will give output like:

{
 "latest_block_hash": "920E4D32F02CFF8064D26DD7D34C65DC623F4026C65C192BBCD7DBF19AFB5630",
 "latest_app_hash": "442E7E55982109D9F73467EA0E374312B402AE620DEC81CB3441E949ED0D0A29",
 "latest_block_height": "2437",
 "latest_block_time": "2022-05-25T23:07:36.752766828Z",
 "earliest_block_hash": "9D2AF876309BB9174604004A813DCFEE94F4947B08C5BB4C1A042F318488851E",
 "earliest_app_hash": "E3B0C44298FC1C149AFBF4C8996FB92427AE41E4649B934CA495991B7852B855",
 "earliest_block_height": "1",
 "earliest_block_time": "2022-05-25T17:00:00Z",
 "catching_up": true
}

The main thing to watch is that the block height is increasing. Once you are caught up with the chain, catching_up will become false. At that point, you can start using your node to create a validator.

To check the logs of the node:​

sudo journalctl -u kava -f

Create Validator Node​

If you would like to setup a validator, continue the steps outlined in Run Validator Node