Join a Network

Follow this guide to join an existing network through statesync To quickly stand up a fresh full node and join in the network, it's recommended to sync through state sync. If you want to run a local instance of Sei, see Running a Local Node

Install Seid Binary

To stand up a sei node, the first step is to download and install seid on your machine. If you have not done so, follow the steps in Install Seid.

State Sync

State sync allows a new node to join a network by fetching a snapshot of the application state at a recent height instead of fetching and replaying all historical blocks. This can reduce the time needed to sync with the network from days to minutes.

Clean Up

If you are not starting a node from fresh, then you need to do some backups and clean ups.

# Assuming your sei home directory is /root/.sei
# backup priv_validator_state.json
cp /root/.sei/data/priv_validator_state.json /root/priv_validator_state.json
 
# backup priv_validator_key.json
cp /root/.sei/config/priv_validator_key.json /root/priv_validator_key.json
 
# backup genesis.json
cp /root/.sei/config/genesis.json /root/genesis.json
rm -rf /root/.sei/data/*
rm -rf /root/.sei/wasm
rm -rf /root/.sei/config/priv_validator_key.json
rm -rf /root/.sei/config/genesis.json

Note: This step is not needed for fresh nodes.

Update Configurations

Set up rpc servers for primary and secondary endpoints. You can use one of the RPC endpoints from the Tools and Resources page.
Set up trust height and trust hash. Each snapshot is created at a certain block height, and best practice here is to set the trust height to be earlier than the latest snapshot block height to avoid backward verifications.

# Example: set trust height and hash to be the block height 10,000 earlier
PRIMARY_ENDPOINT=https://sei-testnet-rpc.polkachu.com:443
TRUST_HEIGHT_DELTA=10000
 
LATEST_HEIGHT=$(curl -s "$PRIMARY_ENDPOINT"/block | jq -r ".block.header.height")
if [[ "$LATEST_HEIGHT" -gt "$TRUST_HEIGHT_DELTA" ]]; then
  SYNC_BLOCK_HEIGHT=$(($LATEST_HEIGHT - $TRUST_HEIGHT_DELTA))
else
  SYNC_BLOCK_HEIGHT=$LATEST_HEIGHT
fi
 
# Get trust hash
SYNC_BLOCK_HASH=$(curl -s "$PRIMARY_ENDPOINT/block?height=$SYNC_BLOCK_HEIGHT" | jq -r ".block_id.hash")
 
# Override configs
sed -i.bak -e "s|^trust-height *=.*|trust-height = $SYNC_BLOCK_HEIGHT|" ~/.sei/config/config.toml
sed -i.bak -e "s|^trust-hash *=.*|trust-hash = \"$SYNC_BLOCK_HASH\"|" ~/.sei/config/config.toml

Set up persistent peers. If you need additional bootstrap-peer or persistent-peer (used for known good peers) in ~/.sei/config/config.toml.See Configure General Settings for more info about each peer field.

# Example: Get the peers from polkachu rpc server
PRIMARY_ENDPOINT=https://sei-testnet-rpc.polkachu.com:443
SELF=$(cat /root/.sei/config/node_key.json |jq -r .id)
 
curl "$PRIMARY_ENDPOINT"/net_info |jq -r '.peers[] | .url' |sed -e 's#mconn://##'|grep -v "$SELF"  > PEERS
 
PERSISTENT_PEERS=$(paste -s -d ',' PEERS)
sed -i.bak -e "s|^persistent-peers *=.*|persistent-peers = \"$PERSISTENT_PEERS\"|" ~/.sei/config/config.toml

Enable state sync and disable db sync. Note, you can only enable either state sync or db sync at a time.

# Enable state sync
sed -i.bak -e "s|^enable *=.*|enable = true|" ~/.sei/config/config.toml
sed -i.bak -e "s|^db-sync-enable *=.*|db-sync-enable = false|" ~/.sei/config/config.toml

Restore Backups

Once you finished the above steps, if you previously have done the clean up step, we need to restore the previously backed up files.

# Restore previously backed up files
cp /root/priv_validator_state.json /root/.sei/data/priv_validator_state.json
cp /root/priv_validator_key.json /root/.sei/config/priv_validator_key.json
cp /root/genesis.json /root/.sei/config/genesis.json

Configure General Settings Running Seid