ava-sim

ava-sim makes it easy for anyone to spin up a local instance of an Avalanche network to interact with the standard APIs or to test a custom VM.

Prerequisites

You must have Golang >= 1.16 and a configured $GOPATH.

Standard Network

To spin up a standard 5 node network, just run ./scripts/run.sh. When the network is running, you'll see the following logs printed:

standard VM endpoints now accessible at:
NodeID-7Xhw2mDxuDS44j42TCB6U5579esbSt3Lg: http://127.0.0.1:9650
NodeID-MFrZFVCXPv5iCn6M9K6XduxGTYp891xXZ: http://127.0.0.1:9652
NodeID-NFBbbJ4qCmNaCzeW7sxErhvWqvEQMnYcN: http://127.0.0.1:9654
NodeID-GWPcbFJZFfZreETSoWjPimr846mXEKCtu: http://127.0.0.1:9656
NodeID-P7oB2McjBGgW2NXXWVYjV8JEDFoW9xDE5: http://127.0.0.1:9658

Custom VM (Subnet)

Before running your own VM, we highly recommend reading the Create a Custom Blockchain Tutorial. This tool automates all the steps here so running your own VM is just a single command.

To spin up a 5 node network where all nodes run your custom VM, just run ./scripts/run.sh [vm] [vm-genesis]. In this command, [vm] is the path to your custom VM binary and [vm-genesis] is the path to your custom VM genesis. You can learn more about writing your own VM here.

Example: TimestampVM

For those that have yet to create their own VM, you can run ./scripts/timestampvm.sh to start your own network + subnet running the TimestampVM. After initial network startup, you'll see the following logs when all validators in the network are validating your custom blockchain (the actual blockchain ID may be slightly different):

NodeID-7Xhw2mDxuDS44j42TCB6U5579esbSt3Lg validating blockchain 28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2
NodeID-MFrZFVCXPv5iCn6M9K6XduxGTYp891xXZ validating blockchain 28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2
NodeID-NFBbbJ4qCmNaCzeW7sxErhvWqvEQMnYcN validating blockchain 28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2
NodeID-GWPcbFJZFfZreETSoWjPimr846mXEKCtu validating blockchain 28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2
NodeID-P7oB2McjBGgW2NXXWVYjV8JEDFoW9xDE5 validating blockchain 28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2

When the VM is ready to interact with, the URLs it is accessible on will be printed out:

Custom VM endpoints now accessible at:
NodeID-7Xhw2mDxuDS44j42TCB6U5579esbSt3Lg: http://127.0.0.1:9650/ext/bc/28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2
NodeID-MFrZFVCXPv5iCn6M9K6XduxGTYp891xXZ: http://127.0.0.1:9652/ext/bc/28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2
NodeID-NFBbbJ4qCmNaCzeW7sxErhvWqvEQMnYcN: http://127.0.0.1:9654/ext/bc/28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2
NodeID-GWPcbFJZFfZreETSoWjPimr846mXEKCtu: http://127.0.0.1:9656/ext/bc/28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2
NodeID-P7oB2McjBGgW2NXXWVYjV8JEDFoW9xDE5: http://127.0.0.1:9658/ext/bc/28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2

You can view a full list of simple methods you can use to interact with the custom VM here. Getting the genesis block is a good starter:

curl -X POST --data '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "timestampvm.getBlock",
    "params":{
        "id":""
    },
    "id": 1
}' -H 'content-type:application/json;' 127.0.0.1:9650/ext/bc/28TtJ7sdYvdgfj1CcXo5o3yXFMhKLrv4FQC9WhgSHgY6YNYRs2

What this is NOT

This tool is NOT intended to be a full-fledged node automation framework. Rather, it is meant to be a simple tool for anyone to get started with Avalanche.

If you are looking for a more powerful framework, check out avash. This tool lets you run multiple versions of the same binary and provide custom node configs.

TODOs

Cleanup node initialization (should be able to init directly instead of needing to convert from flags to config)