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Bridging content into the Portal history network#

Seeding history content with the Nimbus Portal bridge#

The Nimbus Portal bridge requires era1 files as source for the block content from before the merge. It requires access to a full node with EL JSON-RPC API for seeding the latest (head of the chain) block content. Any block content between the merge and the latest is currently not implemented, but will be implemented in the future by usage of era files as source.

Step 1: Run a Portal client#

Run a Portal client with the Portal JSON-RPC API enabled, e.g. Nimbus Portal client:

./build/nimbus_portal_client --rpc --storage-capacity:0

Note: The --storage-capacity:0 option is not required, but it is added here for the use case where the node's only focus is on gossiping content from the portal bridge.

Step 2: Run an EL client#

The Nimbus Portal bridge needs access to the EL JSON-RPC API, either through a local Ethereum client or via a web3 provider.

Step 3: Run the Portal bridge in history mode#

Build & run the Nimbus Portal bridge: 

make nimbus_portal_bridge

WEB3_URL="http://127.0.0.1:8548" # Replace with your provider.
./build/nimbus_portal_bridge history --web3-url:${WEB3_URL}

By default the Nimbus Portal bridge will run in --latest mode, which means that only the latest block content will be gossiped into the network.

It also has a --backfill mode which will gossip pre-merge blocks from era1 files into the network. By default the bridge will audit first whether the content is available on the network and if not it will gossip it into the network.

E.g. run latest + backfill with audit mode: 

WEB3_URL="http://127.0.0.1:8548" # Replace with your provider.
./build/nimbus_portal_bridge history --latest:true --backfill:true --audit:true --era1-dir:/somedir/era1/ --web3-url:${WEB3_URL}

Seeding directly from the Nimbus Portal client#

This method currently only supports seeding block content from before the merge. It uses era1 files as source for the content.

  1. Run the Nimbus Portal client and enable portal_debug JSON-RPC API: 

    ./build/nimbus_portal_client --rpc --rpc-api:portal,portal_debug

  2. Trigger the seeding of the content with the portal_debug_historyGossipHeaders and portal_debug_historyGossipBlockContent JSON-RPC methods. The first method will gossip in the block headers, the second method will gossip the block bodies and receipts. It is important to first trigger the gossip of the headers because these are required for the validation of the bodies and the receipts.

curl -s -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":"1",
"method":"portal_debug_historyGossipHeaders","params":["/somedir/era1/"]}' http://localhost:8545 | jq

curl -s -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":"1","method":"portal_debug_historyGossipBlockContent","params":["/somedir/era1/"]}' http://localhost:8545 | jq