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Join the Blend Network as a core node

Connect your blockchain node to Blend to contribute to proposer privacy.​

Joining the Blend Network lets your blockchain node contribute to the privacy of Logos Blockchain proposers and receive rewards for participating. This procedure applies to operators of a running Logos Blockchain node who want to register that node as a Blend core node. Before you start, make sure your node's address is publicly reachable so other peers can connect to it.

note

Joining the Blend Network as a core node via a Basecamp is not currently supported.

Instead, follow the CLI instructions below, but navigate to your Basecamp Logos Blockchain node's Generate-Config screen to find the Blend port field. Use this value in place of <YOUR_BLEND_PORT>.

Prerequisites
  • A running blockchain node.
  • A publicly reachable IP and port (or DNS) combination for the node.
  • Stable connection (10 Mbps+ recommended) to handle multiple concurrent connections. A stable, low-latency connection is beneficial for effective message blending and timing obfuscation.

What to expect​

  • Your blockchain node is registered as a Blend core node.
  • Your node contributes to proposer privacy and becomes eligible for rewards.
  • Your declaration is confirmed on-chain and becomes active after two epochs.

Register your node as a Blend core node​

Complete these steps to fund the required keys, retrieve a locked note, and submit your Blend join declaration.

  1. Start the node and poll until the mode switches to "Online". This takes approximately one hour:

    logoscore call blockchain_module get_cryptarchia_info | jq -r .result.value | jq .mode
    # > "Bootstrapping"

    # ... Wait ~1h, then re-run until you see:
    # > "Online"

  2. Open your keystore.yaml and use the faucet to send funds to both the BlendZk and SdpFunding public keys.

    # keystore.yaml
    public_keys:
      ...
      BlendZk: 13cccf99f90fd78c2134891ce3c1afce0605753a7694b9d56678d63a8d471820
      ...
      SdpFunding: 91d381a87e05d46fc9bc95246273b6930290506f0589ad039444decd3c24940e
      ...

  3. Wait until both keys have received funds. Check each balance with wallet_get_notes. You may need to repeat the faucet requests since only one drip is allowed per block:

    logoscore call blockchain_module wallet_get_notes <ADDRESS> "" \
      | jq -r .result.value | jq .notes
    # > [
    # >   {
    # >     "id": "<BLEND_ZK_NODE_ID>",
    # >     "value": "1000"
    # >   }
    # > ]
    • Note the id of a note held by the BlendZk key — you need it in the next step.

  4. Join the Blend Network by locking one of the notes held by your BlendZk key.

info

Make sure to open <YOUR_BLEND_PORT>/udp on the public host firewall before running the following command. <YOUR_BLEND_PORT> can be found in user_config.yaml under blend.core.backend.listening_address. Configure the firewall and NAT forwarding before joining and verify the local listener and public reachability after activation.

logoscore call blockchain_module blend_join_as_core_node \
   "/ip4/<YOUR_IP>/udp/<YOUR_BLEND_PORT>/quic-v1" \
   "<BLEND_ZK_NOTE_ID>"

 # A successful call will return the declaration id:
 # > {"method":"blend_join_as_core_node","module":"blockchain_module","result":{"error":null,"success":true,"value":"2691821bd61394cc18939626de4e9231c699e8ddefd1ebf9e6c35b32229bdc65"},"status":"ok"}
  • <YOUR_IP>: Must be your external IP address
  • <YOUR_BLEND_PORT>: Your configured Blend port from the user_config.yaml file (blend.core.backend.listening_address). Note that if you do port-mapping, the external mapped port must be used.
  • <BLEND_ZK_NOTE_ID>: The note ID of one of the notes held by your BlendZk key, as queried above.
  • The Blend core listener starts only after the node's declaration becomes active.

  1. Confirm the declaration was accepted on-chain by polling /mantle/sdp/declarations and looking for your entry:

    curl http://<YOUR_NODE_IP>:8080/mantle/sdp/declarations | jq .
    # > {
    # >   "<DECLARATION_ID>": {
    # >     "service_type": "BN",
    # >     "provider_id": "35d60d973560b8344f83dc266a3fe89e35a3dcf9959c492d0a7a0b7a85c5d2ce",
    # >     "locked_note_id": "<BLEND_ZK_NOTE_ID>",
    # >     "locators": [
    # >       "/ip4/<YOUR_IP>/udp/<YOUR_BLEND_PORT>/quic-v1"
    # >     ],
    # >     "zk_id": "13cccf99f90fd78c2134891ce3c1afce0605753a7694b9d56678d63a8d471820",
    # >     "created": 1,
    # >     "active": 3,
    # >     "withdraw_at": null,
    # >     "nonce": 0
    # >   }
    # > }
    • The response is a JSON object keyed by declaration id (not a list). Find your entry by its provider_id (your BlendSigning key) or zk_id (your BlendZk key).
    • service_type: "BN" identifies this as a Blend node declaration.
    • created is the epoch your declaration was included; it takes effect about two epochs later. active is the most recent epoch your node has re-attested activity for (via the periodic Active message), so it advances over time — it equals created + 2 right after activation and grows on a long-running node.
    • If your declaration is not yet listed, retry after your transaction is included in a block.

  2. Check the configured Blend UDP listener:

    ss -lun
    • Confirm that the local UDP port from blend.core.backend.listening_address is present. If the public Blend port differs, also confirm that NAT forwards <YOUR_BLEND_PORT>/udp to this local port.

Frequently asked questions​

Did my core declaration land?​

After declaring as a core node, query the on-chain SDP declarations and look for your entry:

curl -s http://localhost:8080/mantle/sdp/declarations

Find the entry whose zk_id is your BlendZk key, with "service_type": "BN". It will become active a couple of epochs after the declaring transaction is included in a block, and stays active only while the node keeps sending Active messages.

Is my node participating in the Blend Network right now?​

Check the node log for the Blend service lifecycle:

grep -aE "blend::service" <node-log> | tail
  • Waiting for chain to become Online mode — not yet; the node is still bootstrapping.
  • Chain is now Online, followed by the Blend service starting and Blend edge swarm started with local peer id … — proposals will be routed through Blend, whether your node is a core node or not.
  • current membership is ready members=N — the node sees N active core nodes this epoch. If N is below the minimum needed, the node falls back to broadcast mode for that epoch (no Blend privacy).

There is also an API endpoint, curl http://localhost:8080/blend/info, which returns the Blend Network info once the node is Online. Note that it can hang or time out while the node is still bootstrapping (Blend is not up yet), so it is better to use the log check during sync.