An Ape’s guide to run a full node for Zenon on Windows 10.

Shazz
5 min readNov 30, 2021

--

As you may have experienced, Syrius can act a bit wonky in the early days after Zenon Alphanet release, especially during hours of high usage. The reason for that at times there aren’t enough full nodes that can process all requests sent from the syrius wallets of every network participant. This is completely normal and every early Bitcoiner will confirm this was the case too back in the days.

The solution is to run your own full node locally if you can. Not only does this help decentralize the network and reduce the load on public nodes (which can only handle a certain amount of load), it also prevents you from being fed wrong data from someone else’s node.

A fellow degen fittingly used the analogy of having your own personal barista instead of having to wait for a latte because you use a public one. You ask for your coffee (syrius query data) to your personal worker instead of using the one everyone is yelling at.

Just like Bitcoin in its early days, early users run their own full nodes to

  • improve the uptime of their wallets
  • decentralize the network
  • improve their privacy and get a direct data stream from the network (instead via an intermediary public node)

Disclaimer: The following process worked for me, it doesn’t mean it will for you. If you’re a relative noob like me when it comes to programming and stuff (not boomer-level but also not engineer-level), then this might be helpful for you.

I created this guide based on Sigli’s (da real MVP) direct instructions and some inputs from community members. To me, this seems to be the most straightforward approach for Windows 10 I have seen so far, and also the only one that worked for me.

EDIT JANUARY 22// The full node was updated:

znnd node v0.0.2 is now available for download:

https://github.com/zenon-network/go-zenon/releases/latest

  • implemented a dual layer asymmetric cache: dramatically reduced memory usage; now it is possible to run the node on low end hardware and support network decentralization
  • simpler setup: the genesis and peers are now embedded into the codebase
  • more target architectures are now supported, including Apple Silicon

Step 1

Make sure your firewall doesn’t block syrius (add syrius as an app that can communicate through the firewall in the windows firewall settings)

Step 2

Open the command prompt app (“Windows PowerShell”) with Administrator permissions, type the following command and then press enter:

Note: If you have Windows 10 May 2020 (2004) update (or later) installed you can install WSL with a single command. If you don’t yet have the Windows 10 May 2020 (2004) update there are a couple of additional steps you’ll need to go through in order to get things set up.

Step 3

Reboot your laptop.

Step 4

Install Ubuntu 20.04. Go to Windows store. Search Ubuntu and install 20.04. You will need to set a username and password the first time you use it.

Step 5

Enter the command sudo -i in the ubuntu terminal to log in as root (you might have to do this every time you launch ubuntu in order to interact with your full node)

Step 6

Then follow the steps described here https://github.com/zenon-network/znn-bundle/blob/master/PILLARS.md until you’ve done the first point in step 3:

Step 7

Now you copy-paste this command into your ubuntu terminal

sudo fallocate -l 16G /swapfile && sudo chmod 600 /swapfile && sudo mkswap /swapfile && sudo swapon /swapfile && echo ‘/swapfile none swap sw 0 0’ | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Step 8

And finally this one: ./znnd

Step 9

Now you wait, after a minute or two you should see the node synchronizing with the network. If it looks like this, you’re good:

Step 10

Now wait until it has fully synced. For this, ask the community (or check on the Zenon explorer once it’s up) at which momentum height the network currently is.

NOTE: Syncing often pauses for a few minutes at height 27050 — this is normal. Just be patient as it can take several minutes before it eventually continues.

In the unexpected case that the syncing process is interrupted, try to resync with the following command: ./znn-controller (and then choose the resync option).

Step 11

Once your node is fully synced to the current momentum height, you launch syrius. In the Settings tab you scroll down and manually add a new node called ws://localhost:35998 (alternatively you can try to connect to the node called ws://127.0.0.1:35998 but that didn’t work for me).

If it still doesn’t work restart ubuntu, log in as root again with sudo -i and enter the following commands:

35995:35998/tcp

35995:35998/udp

and then ./znnd

You should now be connected to your local full node running on your machine. You can see if it’s running correctly when it regularly updates the momentum height and the latest height is identical to that of other people running full nodes.

Step 12: How to use your full node?

When you start your machine, before logging in to syrius you launch ubuntu 20.04 as root with sudo -i and then use the command ./znnd to launch the node.

Once it has synced to the most recent momentum height, launch syrius and make sure it’s connected to the node as explained in step 11.

Good luck, have fun!

Shazz

Ps. If you’re having trouble, just post a message (by describing your problem as specifically as possible) in the zenon main or community chat and someone will help you out:

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

--

--

Shazz
Shazz

Written by Shazz

znnAlien since December 2019

Responses (1)

What are your thoughts?