Overview

This image is intended to quickly launch a Polkadot or Kusama node from a snapshot for fast syncing.

Recommended hardware

• CPU - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz
• Storage - min. 500GB
• Memory - 32GB

Env variables

• CHAIN (defaults to polkadot): polkadot/kusama
• SNAP_MODE (defaults to true): true/false

Quickstart (3 steps).

git clone https://github.com/Sensei-Node/polkadot-node
cd polkadot-node
docker-compose up -d

Check if you are synced to the network with the following curl command:

curl --location --request POST 'localhost:9933' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-raw '{"id":1, "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method": "chain_getHeader"}'

Result:

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","result":{"digest":{"logs":["0x0642414245b5010122000000c2eca50f0000000064cf4eefec2a6c9e5b8f00e278ab75a4e38230a58cd7fa1ecb5fd2caf0a7d06fb3912c8ae13ab500f182bb3e3df3268fc163fc7104f16732ef4273a643bde007e5e30c84ae9d1d227a4ee992bee7fb808c2bf63dd1f079df32605cb5b9b9040f","0x0542414245010114d20f5b7ee26b75b27121b05c69479343d95c91b5c1823154dc41671cb7f965a571d2e6845539abe0e60c0a197dd2a3f0a50d21d8a3d3b413684dc33664ac88"]},"extrinsicsRoot":"0x7ce9ffdc5a57fe99e043c4b1d0a05bb7521eff11911c0be2a8275b63636e9228","number":"0x93c0","parentHash":"0xb0640392538945c55c9c3d8dc114714a9eec709a81f09dcf667f0fc795596c98","stateRoot":"0x2d0b3427941a5ca873ead20e3b3a6d0d0cb0f967d94b92239e4fe54fffe68d49"},"id":1}

The block height is specified as "number" and is expressed in hex format, use a hex convertor to find out the int number.

If you are installing from snapshot the connection will be refused until the node finishes downloading and extracting the blockchain database.

Check the node logs

docker logs --tail 100 polka-node

Notes

• Need to specify the env variables inside the docker-compose file.
• Nodes launched with this docker-compose have RPC api enabled by default.
• Snap mode will always look for latest snapshot.
• Important: This image always downloads the protocol client from the official Parity repository.

Resources

• API docs: https://polkadot.js.org/docs/substrate/rpc