Become a Peerplays Witness

Peerplays’ mission relies heavily on the principle of decentralization. That’s why those who help Peerplays become more distributed are rewarded. We always welcome new Witnesses (aka Node Operators) as part of our efforts to keep our network as secure and stable as possible. In this blog post, we go over how to become a Peerplays Witness.

What do Peerplays Witnesses do

Peerplays Witnesses are the backbone of the Peerplays blockchain. Witnesses play an important role in ensuring the integrity of the network, validating transactions, and creating blocks. They ensure the security and functionality of the network. A larger number of Witnesses on Peerplay’s mainnet is beneficial to the entire ecosystem. In addition, witnesses will be rewarded for generating blocks. No expensive mining software or equipment is required!

What makes being a Peerplays Witness different from being a Bitcoin miner is that it is unbiased. On Peerplays, every Witness is valued, and there are equal weights associated with each block produced by them. As a result, more blocks can be generated each hour, expanding the potential for rewards and improving the system’s efficiency in comparison to Bitcoin mining.

Why become a Peerplays Witness

Be the revolution: Peerplays witnesses can join a promising blockchain project as blockchain adoption grows. You also join an intrinsically driven community movement that works for the greater good and ensures every user gets their fair share.

The first, the change: Be one of the first ones to take the crypto community to a whole new level. You get to be a part of the story.

Voting access: You get the exclusive rights to vote in blockchain governance. 

Earn PPY:  Your presence and efforts are rewarded in PPY, which is Peerplays native token.   

What it takes to become a Peerplays Witness

In comparison to mining Bitcoin, processing power has no bearing on the number of blocks you produce or the amount of rewards you receive. For each server, you would need the following as a minimum, though:

CPU: 8 Cores

Memory: 8GB

Storage: 300GB SSD

Bandwidth: 1Gbps

OS: Ubuntu 18.04

Please be aware that these requirements are the absolute minimum. To “future-proof” your servers, you should ideally have slightly higher specifications.

Steps for becoming a Witness

We’ll now walk you through the process of becoming a Witness. The procedure requires setting up and running a Witness Node. Here’s how:

Step #1 – Set up your Witness Account

To start, visit https://market.peerplays.com/ and click the “CREATE AN ACCOUNT” button if you don’t already have a Peerplays DEX account. You must own at least 15 PPY (Peerplays Native Token) to be eligible to be a Witness. You must start by funding your account with HIVE or BTC. Then, you need to exchange your assets for PPY. Simply head over to the “MEMBERSHIP” section of the DEX and select the “BUY LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION” button once you have the necessary 15 PPY. 

This tutorial video walks you through the entire process of the first part.

Step #2 – Install the Witness Node & CLI Wallet Programs

First, you’ll need to update the package repository and install a few packages. Second, you’ll need to make an artifacts directory in our home directory and then download the artifacts zipfile to unzip. Then, you will need to copy the Witness Node and CLI wallet programs to the user’s local bin directory. This means you can run the program from anywhere. Now you need to run the Witness Node and press Control C to stop it. This makes a configuration file that you will later update.

This tutorial video walks you through the second part of the process.

Step #3 – Setting up the Witness Node

First, you’ll need to open the CLI wallet with the S-flag and add an API node, which will let you connect to a chain that is already running. This brings up our brand-new wallet, which will need a new password. Then you’ll have access to both your private and public owner keys. Store them for later. Then, you will use the “get witness command” to get your Witness ID. You’ll need to go to the Witness Data Directory to make changes to the config.ini file, where you’ll need to insert your Witness ID. Now you can finally run the Witness Node!

This part of the process requires you to attentively watch this instructional video.

Step #4 – Finish setting up the Witness Node

First, you’ll have to update the package repository and install a few packages that are needed. Next, you will copy the Peerplays Docker project from Gitlab. Then, use the run.sh script to run the installer docker command. Once you’ve installed Docker, you’ll need to copy the example environment file so you can make your own changes and update the port’s variable. Then, you’ll set the remote web socket variable to the address of a public API Node. Now, you can save the file and close it. In order to finish the last few steps, you must run the install command from the shell script. This will install the latest CLI wallet and witness node. Then you can start up the node.

Please refer to this tutorial video to understand how to finish installing the Witness Node.

A Step-By-Step Guide to becoming a Witness

If you’d like a detailed walkthrough of the entire procedure from start to finish (complete with code snippets you can copy and paste into your own installation), please visit the Witness Installation Guides.

Got questions? Come join us on our community platform and ask away!