Generating keys

Before the genesis ceremony begins, the pre-genesis network participants must generate their public and private keys. The pre-genesis network participants must ensure that their private keys are kept secret and that their public keys are submitted to the network coordinator in due time.

This can be done through the namada cli:

ALIAS="<your-key-alias>"
namadaw --pre-genesis key gen --alias $ALIAS

After the user has entered their passwords and written down their mnemonic phrase, the namada cli will save the keys to the pre-genesis folder inside the base directory.

In order to print the keys, the user can run the following command:

# Not recommended in production since it will print the private key to the terminal (which can be recovered)
cat $BASE_DIR/pre-genesis/wallet.toml

It is the public keys that the pre-genesis network participants must submit to the network coordinator.

# Example wallet.toml
[public_keys]
bengt = "ED25519_PK_PREFIXtpknam1qq2vscpcvhdwht9tldj9ntxnknandhnerhzd6d42xqzukw2kpcfpudh3dl2"
 
...
 
[addresses]
bengt = "tnam1qq97eqvv4lam8ds00j9em2s2f0r8e7r60qw9fdfq"

It is then the right hand side of each of these fields that is submitted to the network coordinator, i.e ED25519_PK_PREFIXtpknam1qq2vscpcvhdwht9tldj9ntxnknandhnerhzd6d42xqzukw2kpcfpudh3dl2 and tnam1qq97eqvv4lam8ds00j9em2s2f0r8e7r60qw9fdfq in the example above.

The network coordinator should specify the schema in which the pre-genesis network participants should submit their public keys and addresses. A toml file with the following schema is recommended:

[<pre-genesis-participant-alias>]
"public-key" = "ED25519_PK_PREFIXtpknam1qpjs6jrjuu5cj508ys7ezee4r40v8as6vz4j3ddc9qm68nfhf5n7clp4xse"
"address" = "tnam1qq5skuga54tfs7422hzz8sqvk3s6lhe2dg32jjhd"

Submitting keys and addresses

After the network coordinator has published the location (conventionally a git repository) for the pre-genesis network participants to submit their public keys, the participants are expected to submit their generated public keys (and their corresponding addresses) to the network coordinator in due time. The deadline will be set by the network coordinator.

Generating transactions

Participants are also responsible for generating the genesis-block transactions that set the initial state of the blockchain, including initialising genesis validator accounts and bonding to them. However, it is only possible to make transactions that require value once the balances of the keys become agreed upon (once the balances.toml file has been published).

Generate an established account

In order to generate a pre-genesis validator account, the pre-genesis network participants must first generate an established account. This can be done through the namada cli:

#Ensure $BASE_DIR is set to the base directory
TX_FILE_PATH="$BASE_DIR/pre-genesis/transactions.toml"
namadac utils init-genesis-established-account --path $TX_FILE_PATH --aliases $ALIAS
 
# You can change the `--path` argument to any file path, but the recommended is `$BASE_DIR/pre-genesis/transactions.toml`

The command will ouptut the generated address of the established account.

Derived established account address: tnam1q8lsztqqhpjxdwzw88mqqc2mun7dvpxvas3v2dxk

It is useful to save this address for later use.

ESTABLISHED_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS=tnam1q8lsztqqhpjxdwzw88mqqc2mun7dvpx

This will generate a transactions.toml file that contains the pre-genesis transaction that will establish the account. The transactions.toml file should look something like this:

[[established_account]]
vp = "vp_user"
threshold = 1
public_keys = ["tpknam1qr872zwdvw4u4nkpl0ykmvhyvxw7j0u6g7ymz03d7he0jr3szkuwczddjp2"]

Generate a pre-genesis multisignature account

In order to generate a pre-genesis multisignature account, simply add multiple --aliases flags to the command:

# Ensure $BASE_DIR is set to the base directory
# Assuming that the values of $ALIAS1, $ALIAS2, and $ALIAS3 are the aliases of the pre-genesis keys that were generated in the [Generating keys](#generating-keys) step.
TX_FILE_PATH="$BASE_DIR/pre-genesis/transactions.toml"
namadac utils init-genesis-established-account --path $TX_FILE_PATH --aliases $ALIAS1 --aliases $ALIAS2 --aliases $ALIAS3

The command will ouptut the generated address of the multisignature account.

Derived established account address: tnam1q8qvns6ndpff03wmszkhgepk2r8f9ws68ugktfml

The corresponding transactions.toml file should look something like this:

[[established_account]]
vp = "vp_user"
threshold = 1
public_keys = ["tpknam1qr872zwdvw4u4nkpl0ykmvhyvxw7j0u6g7ymz03d7he0jr3szkuwczddjp2", "tpknam1qpz5n0u49s6s5jx4nyycyw0w288yfq96p3lvwxkedxyw77y0vd53sqmryce"]

Generate a pre-genesis validator account

Once the pre-genesis network participants have generated respective pre-genesis established accounts, they can generate their pre-genesis validator accounts. This can be done through the namada cli:

# Ensure $BASE_DIR is set to the base directory
# Ensure $ESTABLISHED_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS is set
# Ensure $TX_FILE_PATH is set
 
EMAIL="<your-email>"
SELF_BOND_AMOUNT=1000000 # Set this to the amount of NAM you want to self-bond
VALIDATOR_ALIAS="<your-validator-alias>"
namadac utils init-genesis-validator \
  --address $ESTABLISHED_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS \
  --alias $VALIDATOR_ALIAS \
  --net-address "127.0.0.1:26656" \
  --commission-rate 0.05 \
  --max-commission-rate-change 0.01 \
  --self-bond-amount $SELF_BOND_AMOUNT \
  --email $EMAIL \
  --path $TX_FILE_PATH

The above command will append the necessary transactions to the transactions.toml file. The transactions.toml file should look something like this:

Successful execution will output the new validator address:

Validator account address: tnam1q8lsztqqhpjxdwzw88mqqc2mun7dvpxvas3v2dxk

Signing transactions

Once the transactions.toml file has been generated, the pre-genesis network participants must sign the transactions. This can be done through the namada cli:

namadac utils sign-genesis-txs \
    --path $TX_FILE_PATH \
    --output $BASE_DIR/pre-genesis/signed-transactions.toml \
    --alias $VALIDATOR_ALIAS # This is only necessary if a validator account was generated, otherwise leave out the flag entirely

The above command will output a signed-transactions.toml file that contains the signed transactions.

Submitting transactions

Once all pre-genesis transactions have been generated and signed, the pre-genesis network participants must submit their transactions to the network coordinator in due time. The deadline will be set by the network coordinator. This will involve simply submitting the signed-transactions.toml file to the network coordinator at the agreed upon location.

By convention, a directory for each pre-genesis network participant is created in the git repository. The signed-transactions.toml file is then submitted to the respective directory.