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Armiarma. A distributed network monitoring tool

Motivation

Distributed p2p networks are gaining popularity with the popularization of blockchain applications. In a scenario where the critical message exchange entirely relies on the p2p network underneath, a deep and complete analysis of the real-time network status can directly prevent or spot vulnerabilities on the application protocol.

With this idea in mind, from Miga Labs, we want to provide a tool able to join p2p networks (check the protocol compatibility list), share, and adopt the used protocols to provide the datasets and the tools to study the new blockchain networks generation.

Who are we?

Miga Labs is a young department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), specialized in next-generation Blockchain technology, focusing on Sharding and Proof-of-Stake protocols.

Getting started

The project offers a network crawler able to monitor the Eth2 p2p network.

Prerequisites

To use the tool, the following requirements need to be installed in the machine:

  • git
  • gcc - C compiler
  • go on its 1.17 version or above. Go needs to be executable from the terminal. Lower versions will report a dependency import error for the package io/fs.
  • PostgreSQL DB
  • Docker version 20.10.17 (tested and working)
  • Docker-Compose 1.29.2 (tested and working)

Alternatively, the tool can also be executed from:

OPTIONAL for data visualization:

Binary compilation from source-code

To run the tool from the source code, follow these steps:

# Donwload the git repository of the tool
git clone https://github.com/migalabs/armiarma.git && cd armiarma

# Compile the tool generating the armiarma binary
go build -o armiarma

# Ready to call the tool
./armiarma [options] [FLAGS]

Execution

At the moment, the tool only offers a single command for the crawler. Check the description below.


EXECUTION:
    ./armiarma [OPTIONS] [FLAGS]

OPTIONS:
    eth2   to launch the crawler on the given eth2 network (mainnet, subnets, gnosis, ... all by setting the eth2 parameters in the <eth2-config-file>)     
	
    ipfs   to launch the crawler on any ipfs-based network (ipfs, filecoin, ... all by setting the eth2 prameters in the <ipfs-config-file>)

FLAGS
    --config-file   Load the configuration from the file into the executable.
                    Find a config.json example in ./config-files/eth2-config.json or ./config-files/ipfs-config.json

Docker installation

We also provide a Dockerfile and Docker-Compose file that can be used to run the crawler without having to compile it manually. The docker-compose file spaws the following docker images:

  • Armiarma instance with the configuration file provided by arguments
  • PostgreSQL instance to store crawling data
  • Prometheus instance to read the metrics exported by Armiarma
  • Grafana instance as a dashboard to monitor the crawl (Eth2 dashboard)

List of ports that are going to be used:

Instance Port Passwords
Armiarma 9020 & 9080 -
PostgreSQL 5432 default=password
Prometheus 9090 -
Grafana 3030 default=admin

Tested Requirements:

Instance Version
Docker 20.10.17
Docker-Compose 1.29.2

To spawn up the entire set-up, just run the following command in the root directory

# Call docker-compose in the root of the repository, and that's all
docker-compose up

Docker-compose will generate the Docker images for you and will run the crawler and its requirements in your machine. Please note that, by running the tool through the docker-compose up command, the default config-file will serve as reference config-files/eth2-config.json for the tools' configuration.

Remember that all these default configurations could be modified from the docker-compose.yaml file.

NOTE: you might need to run docker-compose up with sudo privileges if the Linux user doesn't belong to the docker group.

Supported networks

Currently supported protocols:

Ethereum 2      Different networks or forks can be crawled by defining the 'ForkDigest' in the 'config.json' file  
Gnosis          Gnosis fork from the Eth2 Network. Add '56fdb5e0' Gnosis ForkDigest in 'config.file' to discover and crawl the network.

IPFS		The crawler can directly join and discover the IPFS network, as any other Kademlia-DHT based network  
Filecoin

Custom configuration of the tool

The crawler, by default, reads the configuration file located in config-files/config.json. The file contains several fields that can be customized anytime before the launch of the crawler. The fields correspond to the following features:

Eth2-based networks

IP:             IP that wants to be assigned to the crawler (default = "0.0.0.0") 
TcpPort:        Port that will be used to establish TCP connections (default = 9020)
UdpPort:        Port that will be used to establish UDP connections (default = 9020)
TopicArray:     List of GossipSub topics that the tool will be subscribed to. Leave empty [] to get default ones (Eth2 topics)
Network:        Name of the Eth2 Network that the crawler will join (default = "mainnet")
DBEndpoint:     Psql endpoint with the credentials and DB name information. (Example: 'postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/dbname')
Eth2Endpoint:   Endpoint to an Eth2 beacon node such as Infura. Used to dynamically calculate the fork-digest of the Eth2 mainnet (default = "" since default fork-digest = Eth2 Altair)
ForkDigest:     4 byte hexadecimal code of the Network's ForkDigest (default = "afcaaba0")
UserAgent:      Name that will identify the crawler in the joined network (default = "bsc-crawler")
LogLevel:       Level of logs that will be printed in the terminal ("trace", "debug", "info", "warn", "error") (default = "info")
PrivateKey:     hexadecimal encoded libp2p privkey that will be used to create a peerID for the crawler in the network (will generate a new one by default, can be copy-pasted from the printed one in the terminal)
BootNodesFile:  List of boot-nodes that will be used for the peer discovery service (recommended = "./src/discovery/official-eth2-bootnodes.json")

IPFS-based networks

IP:             IP that wants to be assigned to the crawler (default = "0.0.0.0") 
TcpPort:        Port that will be used to establish TCP connections (default = 9020)
UdpPort:        Port that will be used to establish UDP connections (default = 9020)
TopicArray:     List of GossipSub topics that the tool will be subscribed to. Leave empty [] to get default ones (Eth2 topics)
Network:        Name of the Eth2 Network that the crawler will join (default = "mainnet")
DBEndpoint:     Psql endpoint with the credentials and DB name information. (Example: 'postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/dbname')
UserAgent:      Name that will identify the crawler in the joined network (default = "bsc-crawler")
LogLevel:       Level of logs that will be printed in the terminal ("trace", "debug", "info", "warn", "error") (default = "info")
PrivateKey:     hexadecimal encoded libp2p privkey that will be used to create a peerID for the crawler in the network (will generate a new one by default, can be copy-pasted from the printed one in the terminal)
BootNodesFile:  List of boot-nodes that will be used for the peer discovery service (recommended = "./src/discovery/official-eth2-bootnodes.json")

Data visualization

The combination of Prometheus and Grafana is the one that we have chosen to display the network data. In the repository, both configuration files are provided. In addition, the crawler, by default, exports all the metrics to Prometheus in port 9080.

The results of our analysis are also openly available on our website migalabs.es.

Contact

To get in contact with us, feel free to reach us through our email, and don't forget to follow our latest news on Twitter.

Notes

Please, note that the tool is currently in a developing stage. Any bugs report and/or suggestions are very welcome.

License

MIT, see LICENSE file.