keeganquigley/nolik

Nolik is a decentralised and truly secure messenger

Nolik

Nolik is a protocol that allows sending data from peer to peer without a third party. The protocol uses a combination of Blockchain and IPFS technologies. The blockchain is built based on a Substrate framework with a custom pallet. The project is supported by the Web3 Foundation Grant program. Feel free to check the grant application documentation to know more about the protocol.

To interact with the node, send and receive data use nolik-cli app.

Important disclosure

This project is still in the development phase. At this point, it is a working proof of concept. Feel free to try it out, but use it at your own risk.

Setup

Clone Nolik repository

git clone https://github.com/chainify/nolik

Setting a bootstrap node

Pull docker images

docker compose -f docker-compose.alice.yml pull

Run Substrate ans IPFS nodes

docker compose -f docker-compose.alice.yml up -d

Running this command will run a PoA-based blockchain node with a validator role. It will start generation blocks if at least one peer connects to the node.

To print and follow the logs, run

docker logs -f nolik-node --tail 200

After the node starts, you can see the similar output in the logs:

2022-09-11 20:53:47 Substrate Node
2022-09-11 20:53:47 ✌️  version 0.1.3-dev-unknown
2022-09-11 20:53:47 ❤️  by Chainify <https://github.com/chainify>, 2017-2022
2022-09-11 20:53:47 📋 Chain specification: Local Testnet
2022-09-11 20:53:47 🏷  Node name: Alice
2022-09-11 20:53:47 👤 Role: AUTHORITY
2022-09-11 20:53:47 💾 Database: RocksDb at /tmp/alice/chains/local_testnet/db/full
2022-09-11 20:53:47 ⛓  Native runtime: node-nolik-100 (node-nolik-1.tx1.au1)
2022-09-11 20:53:49 Using default protocol ID "sup" because none is configured in the chain specs
2022-09-11 20:53:49 🏷  Local node identity is: 12D3KooWEyoppNCUx8Yx66oV9fJnriXwCcXwDDUA2kj6vnc6iDEp
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 Operating system: linux
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 CPU architecture: x86_64
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 Target environment: gnu
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v4 @ 2.20GHz
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 CPU cores: 2
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 Memory: 1977MB
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 Kernel: 5.15.0-40-generic
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 Linux distribution: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
2022-09-11 20:53:49 💻 Virtual machine: yes
2022-09-11 20:53:49 📦 Highest known block at #1465
2022-09-11 20:53:49 〽️ Prometheus exporter started at 127.0.0.1:9615
2022-09-11 20:53:49 Running JSON-RPC HTTP server: addr=127.0.0.1:9933, allowed origins=Some(["http://localhost:*", "http://127.0.0.1:*", "https://localhost:*", "https://127.0.0.1:*", "https://polkadot.js.org"])
2022-09-11 20:53:49 Running JSON-RPC WS server: addr=0.0.0.0:9944, allowed origins=Some(["http://localhost:*", "http://127.0.0.1:*", "https://localhost:*", "https://127.0.0.1:*", "https://polkadot.js.org"])
2022-09-11 20:53:49 creating instance on iface 172.18.0.3
2022-09-11 20:53:49 discovered: 12D3KooWRDHQNBDTKi69VkkcmnPtZpbJwrPEaXMowAju8TpRPPi3 /ip4/172.18.0.2/tcp/4001
2022-09-11 20:53:49 discovered: 12D3KooWRDHQNBDTKi69VkkcmnPtZpbJwrPEaXMowAju8TpRPPi3 /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4001
2022-09-11 20:53:49 discovered: 12D3KooWRDHQNBDTKi69VkkcmnPtZpbJwrPEaXMowAju8TpRPPi3 /ip4/172.18.0.2/udp/4001/quic
2022-09-11 20:53:49 discovered: 12D3KooWRDHQNBDTKi69VkkcmnPtZpbJwrPEaXMowAju8TpRPPi3 /ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/4001/quic
2022-09-11 20:53:54 💤 Idle (2 peers), best: #1465 (0x9e7c…3551), finalized #1463 (0xc9a8…f3b8), ⬇ 1.3kiB/s ⬆ 1.3kiB/s

Please notice that this node has a Local Identity 12D3KooWEyoppNCUx8Yx66oV9fJnriXwCcXwDDUA2kj6vnc6iDEp. It is required to connect to the node from the Client node (see below). Also, notice that the node name is Alice with the role Authority. The Idle (2 peers) output shows how many Client nodes have connected to the BootNode.

Setting a client node

This node should run locally on your computer.

Pull docker images

docker compose -f docker-compose.bob.yml pull

Run Substrate and IPFS nodes

docker compose -f docker-compose.bob.yml up -d

Running this command will start a PoA-based blockchain node with a validator role. It will start generation blocks after connecting to the BootNode.

To print and follow the logs, run

docker logs -f nolik-node --tail 200

After the node starts you can see the similar output in the logs:

2022-09-11 20:59:55 Substrate Node
2022-09-11 20:59:55 ✌️  version 0.1.3-dev-unknown
2022-09-11 20:59:55 ❤️  by Chainify <https://github.com/chainify>, 2017-2022
2022-09-11 20:59:55 📋 Chain specification: Local Testnet
2022-09-11 20:59:55 🏷  Node name: Bob
2022-09-11 20:59:55 👤 Role: AUTHORITY
2022-09-11 20:59:55 💾 Database: RocksDb at /tmp/bob/chains/local_testnet/db/full
2022-09-11 20:59:55 ⛓  Native runtime: node-nolik-100 (node-nolik-1.tx1.au1)
2022-09-11 20:59:56 You're running on a system with a broken `madvise(MADV_DONTNEED)` implementation. This will result in lower performance.
2022-09-11 20:59:59 Using default protocol ID "sup" because none is configured in the chain specs
2022-09-11 20:59:59 🏷  Local node identity is: 12D3KooWSApPpRFBJg6QiG1wupC5PPezKaHT5F33goffDSDXD2DM
2022-09-11 20:59:59 💻 Operating system: linux
2022-09-11 20:59:59 💻 CPU architecture: x86_64
2022-09-11 20:59:59 💻 Target environment: gnu
2022-09-11 20:59:59 💻 Memory: 7951MB
2022-09-11 20:59:59 💻 Kernel: 5.10.76-linuxkit
2022-09-11 20:59:59 💻 Linux distribution: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
2022-09-11 20:59:59 💻 Virtual machine: no
2022-09-11 20:59:59 📦 Highest known block at #1525
2022-09-11 20:59:59 〽️ Prometheus exporter started at 127.0.0.1:9615
2022-09-11 20:59:59 Running JSON-RPC HTTP server: addr=127.0.0.1:9933, allowed origins=Some(["http://localhost:*", "http://127.0.0.1:*", "https://localhost:*", "https://127.0.0.1:*", "https://polkadot.js.org"])
2022-09-11 20:59:59 Running JSON-RPC WS server: addr=0.0.0.0:9944, allowed origins=Some(["http://localhost:*", "http://127.0.0.1:*", "https://localhost:*", "https://127.0.0.1:*", "https://polkadot.js.org"])
2022-09-11 20:59:59 creating instance on iface 172.28.0.2
2022-09-11 20:59:59 discovered: 12D3KooWQBxcvq7qHsPgE3hakuQmMWUZYFWjt1ssYXioeg341S9L /ip4/172.28.0.3/tcp/4001
2022-09-11 20:59:59 discovered: 12D3KooWQBxcvq7qHsPgE3hakuQmMWUZYFWjt1ssYXioeg341S9L /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4001
2022-09-11 20:59:59 discovered: 12D3KooWQBxcvq7qHsPgE3hakuQmMWUZYFWjt1ssYXioeg341S9L /ip4/172.28.0.3/udp/4001/quic
2022-09-11 20:59:59 discovered: 12D3KooWQBxcvq7qHsPgE3hakuQmMWUZYFWjt1ssYXioeg341S9L /ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/4001/quic
2022-09-11 20:59:59 Accepting new connection 1/100
2022-09-11 21:00:04 💤 Idle (1 peers), best: #1527 (0xe40a…7f89), finalized #1525 (0x1224…400f), ⬇ 2.8kiB/s ⬆ 2.4kiB/s

Notice that the node name is Bob with the role Authority. The Idle (1 peers) means that this Client node has successfully connected to the BootNode.

To configure a custom network and connection to your BootNode update the command in the docker-compose.bob.yml file.

command: bash -c "./target/release/node-nolik --ws-external --base-path /tmp/bob --chain local --bob --port 30333 --bootnodes /ip4/77.223.96.13/tcp/30333/p2p/12D3KooWEyoppNCUx8Yx66oV9fJnriXwCcXwDDUA2kj6vnc6iDEp --validator --rpc-methods=unsafe"

You need to replace a BootNode IP 77.223.96.13 address and a BootNode ID 12D3KooWEyoppNCUx8Yx66oV9fJnriXwCcXwDDUA2kj6vnc6iDEp with your configuration.

Testing in dev mode

There is also an option to test the app on a single computer.

docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d That will launch a blockchain and IPFS nodes in dev mode. With that, you can create several accounts and send data between them. In this case, sending and receiving data is identical to the one with multiple nodes. The only difference is that Alice and Bob will use the same blockchain node to transfer the data and the same IPFS node to store the data.