NKN: a Scalable Self-Evolving and Self-Incentivized Decentralized Network

NKN, short for New Kind of Network, is a project aiming to rebuild the Internet that will be truly open, decentralized, dynamic, safe, shared and owned by the community.

Official website: https://nkn.org/

Introduction

The core of the NKN network consists of many connected nodes distributed globally. Every node is only connected to and aware of a few other nodes called neighbors. Packets can be transmitted from any node to any other node in an efficient and verifiable route. Data can be sent to any clients without public or static IP address using their permanent NKN address with end-to-end encryption.

The relay workload can be verified using our Proof of Relay (PoR) algorithm. A small and fixed portion of the packets will be randomly selected as proof. The random selection can be verified and cannot be predicted or controlled. Proof will be sent to other nodes for payment and rewards.

A node in our network is both relayer and consensus participant. Consensus among massive nodes can be reached efficiently by only communicating with neighbors using our consensus algorithm based on Cellular Automata. Consensus is reached for every block to prevent fork.

More details can be found in our wiki.

Technical Highlights

Transmit any data to any node/client without any centralized server. Related tech design doc
Proof-of-Relay, a useful proof of work: mining is relaying data. Related tech design doc
Extremely scalable consensus algorithm (millions or even billions of nodes). Related tech design doc
Strong consistency rather than eventual consistency. Related tech design doc
Dynamic, large-scale network. Related tech design doc
Verifiable topology and routes. Related tech design doc
Secure address scheme with public key embedded. Related tech design doc

Deployment

Note: this repository is in the early development stage and may not have all functions working properly. It should be used only for testing now.

Q: I want to run this node, but have no idea about programming or temrinal. What should I do?

A: Easiest for you will be to follow docker instructions below. Docker will take care of quite a lot of things for you. If you are asked to run or issue command (usually formatted like this:)

cd change/active/directory/to/this/one

open a terminal (or cmd on windows - start -> run/search -> cmd.exe) and write the command there.

Building from source

To build from source, you need a properly configured Go environment (Go 1.8+, $GOROOT and $GOPATH set up, see Go Official Installation Documentation for more details).

Create directory $GOPATH/src/github.com/nknorg/ if not exists

In directory $GOPATH/src/github.com/nknorg/ clone the repository

$ git clone https://github.com/nknorg/nkn.git

Install package management tool glide if it's not installed on your system.

$ cd nkn
$ make glide

Download dependencies for building

$ make vendor

Build the source code with make

$ make

After building is successful, you should see two executables:

nknd: the nkn node program
nknc: command line tool for nkn node control

Now you can see configuration for how to configure and run a node.

You can also build binaries for other architectures by executing make all. The resulting binaries are stored in build directory.

Building using docker

Prerequirement: Have working docker software installed. For help with that visit official docker docs

Build and tag Docker image

$ docker build -t nkn .

This command should be run once every time you update the code base.

When starting the container, a directory with configuration files containing config.json (see configuration) and wallet.dat (if exists) should be mapped to /nkn directory in the container. This directory will also be used for wallet, block data and logs storage.

Configuration

When starting a node, it will read the configurations from config.json. We provide two sample config.json:

config.testnet.json: join the testnet
config.local.json: create and join a private chain on your localhost

You can copy the one you want to config.json or write your own.

Before starting the node, you need to create a new wallet first:

$ ./nknc wallet -c
Password:
Re-enter Password:
Address                            Public Key
-------                            ----------
NjCWGM1EfJeopJopSQGC6aLEkuug5GiwLM 03d45f701e7e330e1fd1c7cce09ffb95f7b1870e5c429ad8e8c950ddb879093f52

If you are using Docker, it should be docker run -it -v $PWD:/nkn nkn nknc wallet -c instead.

The last line of the output is the public key of this wallet, and the second last line is the wallet address. A wallet address always starts with N.

Wallet information will be saved at wallet.dat and it's encrypted with the password you provided when creating the wallet. So please make sure you pick a strong password and remember it!

Now you can join the testnet or create a private chain.

Join the TestNet

[IMPORTANT] At the current stage, in order to join the Testnet, you need to have a public IP address, or set up port forwarding on your router properly so that other people can establish connection to you.

If you have done the previous steps correctly (config.json, create wallet, public IP or port forwarding), joining the testnet is as simple as running:

$ ./nknd

If you are using Docker then you should run the following command instead:

$ docker run -p 30000-30003:30000-30003 -v $PWD:/nkn --name nkn --rm -it nkn nknd

If you get an error saying docker: Error response from daemon: Conflict. The container name "/nkn" is already in use by container ..., you should run docker rm nkn first to remove the old container.

If everything goes well, you should be part of our TestNet now! You can query your wallet balance (which includes the Testnet token you've mined) by:

$ ./nknc wallet -l balance

or if you are using Docker:

$ docker exec -it nkn nknc wallet -l balance

Note that Testnet token is for testing purpose only, and may be cleared at any time when Testnet resets.

If anything goes wrong, you may want to check if any of the previous steps went wrong. If the problem still persists, create an issue or ask us in our Discord group.

Port forwarding

Most likely your node is behind a router and does not have a public IP address. In such case, you have to setup port forwarding on your router for all ports specified in config.json, otherwise other nodes cannot establish connections to you.

When setting up port forwarding, public port needs to be the same as private port mapped to your node. For example, you should map port 30001 on your router's public IP address to port 30001 on your node's internal IP address.

The specific steps to setup port forwarding depends on your router. But in general, you need to log in to the admin interface of your router (typically in a web browser), then navigate to the port forwarding section, and create several mappings, one for each port. One of the easiest way to find out how to setup port forwarding on your router is to search "how to setup port forwarding" + your router model or name online.

Advanced Usage

There is a tutorial from community member Chris about how to turn a fresh new Raspberry Pi into a node with auto-update and auto-restart. Although it's written for Raspbian OS, it should work for any linux system with little or no modifications.

Contributing

Can I submit a bug, suggestion or feature request?

Yes. Please open an issue for that.

Can I contribute patches to NKN project?

Yes, we appreciate your help! To make contributions, please fork the repo, push your changes to the forked repo with signed-off commits, and open a pull request here.

Please follow our Golang Style Guide for coding style.

Please sign off your commit. This means adding a line "Signed-off-by: Name " at the end of each commit, indicating that you wrote the code and have the right to pass it on as an open source patch. This can be done automatically by adding -s when committing:

git commit -s

doraemon0/nkn