Using Golem on Mainnet

This article is aimed mainly at requestors wishing to switch from running simple test tasks on our development subnet to launching production payloads utilizing the vast number of providers on the public subnet.
If you're a provider, most likely your node is already configured to run on mainnet and using the public subnet.
Okay, so we've seen Golem requestors hand out tasks to providers and saw them pay those providers for the successfully executed tasks. We've also seen how we could utilize layer 2 (zkSync) to speed up those payments and significantly cut the transactions fees.
Still, in the context of running Golem on the Ethereum mainnet, a few important questions remain largely unanswered:
how do you get funds to your requestor so you can use them to pay for the tasks?
how do you get funds out of a Golem node if you don't need them there anymore?
how to secure access to the funds in your Golem wallet if things go haywire?
ERC-20 vs Layer2
The most important distinction in basically every piece of payment-related activity, both when you consider transactions between the network's nodes but also when talking about getting funds in and out of Golem is whether you're using the regular ERC-20 token directly on the Ethereum blockchain or whether you're using zkSync.
While direct, on-chain transactions using ERC-20-based tokens have long become the daily bread for the Ethereum mainnet and constitute a significant part of more than a million transactions passing through the chain each day, the recent spike in both the ETH's price and the average gas prices makes it almost completely useless as a means of exchange in Golem where the value paid will usually be orders of magnitude smaller than the fee for the payment itself.
Of course, if you're willing to accept that disproportion, you may continue to use our ERC-20 payment driver but for the majority of Golem node users, zkSync will be the main platform both when paying for tasks and receiving payments for their execution.
Your Golem wallet
All instructions below assume that you have your daemon launched on another terminal. In case you forgot the command to run the daemon, it's:
yagna service run
If you get any errors while running the other commands here, first always ensure that your daemon is still running correctly.
Golem's wallet is automatically initialized for you the first time you start your yagna daemon and thus, an address associated with it is also generated automatically.
Obviously, to have any kind of funds transferred to your Golem's wallet, you'll need its address. You may obtain it using the id command:
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yagna id show
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The value described as nodeId in the output is the Ethereum address of your Golem node and it's also the address of its wallet. Note it down so you can use it to supply your node with funds.
Sending funds to your account
zkSync
So far the only supported way to enable your requestor wallet to operate on zkSync is to reach out to us to get your address funded with some GLM tokens.
Using the address you obtained in the previous section, reach out to us on our Discord at https://chat.golem.network where, after a short verification process, you'll be issued some GLM tokens directly to your zkSync wallet and your Golem node will be good to go!
The same instruction, already containing your mainnet address can be obtained by running:
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yagna payment fund --network=mainnet --driver=zksync
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ERC-20
On the other hand, if you'd like to use the regular ERC-20 transactions to pay the providers, you'll need to supply your address with some actual GLM tokens, plus some ETH to pay for all the gas fees. Just use you regular wallet to send some GLM and ETH tokens to the node's address.
Again, you'll get the same instruction plus your mainnet address if you run:
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yagna payment fund --network=mainnet --driver=erc20
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Enable the mainnet account
In the current version though, the daemon is set-up to use Ethereum's Rinkeby testnet by default. Also, all accounts are initialized in the receiver mode by default so you need to enable them as a sender (that's the reason we're adding the --sender flag below).
Thus, in order to enable the daemon to use the mainnet, you'll need to tell it so using:
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yagna payment init --sender --network==mainnet --driver=zksync
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or
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yagna payment init --sender --network=mainnet --driver=erc20
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to enable the zkSync or the ERC-20 mainnet drivers respectively.
Again, unless you have good reasons not to, we recommend using zkSync for much lower transaction fees.
The initialization must be performed after every restart of the yagna daemon.
Checking the status of your accounts
Depending on whether you're mainly running a provider node or a requestor one, your default network (blockchain) may be different.
Because of that, when you run yagna payment status to verify the state of your payment account and the amount of GLM tokens you have in your disposal, you may need to add the specific network and driver parameters to point to the network/driver combination that you're interested in.
In the context of running Golem on mainnet, that would mean using:
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yagna payment status --network=mainnet --driver=zksync
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to retrieve the status for the default zkSync (Layer2) driver, or:
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yagna payment status --network=mainnet --driver=erc20
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to see the status for the ERC-20 driver.
Getting your funds out of the Golem node
zkSync
If you'd like to convert your GLM tokens on zkSync back to regular ERC-20 GLM tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, you need to exit the zkSync Layer2.
There are two ways you may perform this operation. In the first case, you may exit from zkSync to the same address. As a result, your GLM tokens will once more become regular ERC-20 tokens and will stay within the same wallet they were in. To do that, just issue the following command:
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yagna payment exit --network=mainnet
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The alternative option is to provide an address to which the exit should be performed. That way, instead of sending the tokens to the address the request was signed by, zkSync will send them to the address you have provided. This is especially useful if you no longer need to use the GLM tokens within the Golem network and would rather have them back on your regular cryptocurrency wallet that may be completely independent of Golem. The command you need is:
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yagna payment exit --to-address=YOUR-ETHEREUM-ADDRESS --network=mainnet
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Be careful though, as Golem does not perform any validation of the supplied address.
ERC-20
It is easiest to access your ERC-20 tokens by using the functionality described below to export your wallet (in Ethereum wallet v3 format) and then import it into MetaMask. Once you import your private key to MetaMask you'll be able to withdraw your ERC-20 tokens.
Backing up your Golem wallet
As you're probably aware, in the Ethereum universe, your funds are only as secure as the private key for the account that holds them. Because of that, to ensure that you don't lose access to your GLM/ETH tokens stored on your Golem account, it's crucial for you to be able to back-up your Golem wallet and store the key in a safe storage, separate from the node itself.
To create a backup of your Golem wallet, export the keystore with:
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yagna id export --file-path=./key.json
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The resultant key.json file in the directory you ran the command from will contain the private key for your Golem wallet.
Once the file is created, examine its contents and ensure that the address property in it is identical to the address of your node's Ethereum address. Normally there's no reason for this field to differ - but treat this step as a redundant check to ensure that you have backed up what you intended to back-up.
Ensure you store that key file in a safe place. In case your Golem wallet gets corrupted or lost, if you don't have the backup, your funds will be lost forever.
Likewise, it's probably a good idea to encrypt the keystore file so that someone who'd take hold of the file wouldn't be able to take control of your funds.
Restoring your backed-up Golem wallet
If, for whatever reason, your Golem wallet is destroyed or corrupted e.g. you moved on to a new machine and forgot to take move Golem's installation with it, you'll be faced with the necessity to recover your wallet from your previously backed-up keystore file.
To restore your wallet, first start with a fresh yagna install:
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curl -sSf https://join.golem.network/as-requestor | bash -
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The above line assumes you're a requestor on a unix-like platform (Linux or Mac). If that's not the case, you should use an installation procedure appropriate for your platform. Please refer to the installation section of our requestor development primer or to the analogous part of the introduction for providers.
Once yagna is installed, run it with:
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yagna service run
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Now, as usual, leave the daemon running in the background and proceed with the rest of the process in another terminal window.
Retrieve your keystore
Here you'll need the key.json file you had previously backed up. Do whatever you need to restore it - e.g. decrypt it if you previously encrypted it. For the process to work, it must be the same plain-text json file that yagna originally exported.
Be sure that your key.json file is in your current working directory and run:
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yagna id create --from-keystore ./key.json
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This should create a new identity in yagna based on your backed-up wallet.
Set the new identity as yagna's default
1. Using the Ethereum address of your backed-up wallet, run:
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yagna id update --set-default 0x-the-address
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2. STOP YOUR YAGNA DAEMON
(just press Ctrl-C in the console that's running yagna service run and wait for the daemon to exit)
3. Remove yagna's accounts configuration file
Ubuntu
mac OS X
Windows
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rm $HOME/.local/share/yagna/accounts.json
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rm $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/GolemFactory.yagna/accounts.json
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del %APPDATA%\GolemFactory\yagna\data\accounts.json
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4. Start your yagna daemon again (as usual, do it in a separate command line terminal and allow it to run in the background)
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yagna service run
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5. Ensure yagna is using your newly-restored wallet
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yagna id show
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The nodeId property should display the Ethereum address of your backed-up wallet.
If your key is password-protected, you'll need to unlock it before it can be used for payments. In such case, yagna id show command above will report:
isLocked: true
To unlock your key, you can use:
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yagna id unlock
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and supply the key's password.
This will unlock your key and yagna will be able to use it for outgoing payments. You can confirm that the operation succeeded by verifying that the output now reports:
isLocked: false
Make sure your yagna application key is bound to the correct account
If you have used yagna before, you have probably already created an application key (the key that the requestor agent uses to connect to the yagna daemon).
In that case, after you import your Ethereum mainnet key, you need to re-create Yagna's application key, as the previous one is now bound to your old (rinkeby) key:
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 yagna app-key create requestor-mainnet
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The name (requestor-mainnetabove) is not important as long as it doesn't collide with the existing one (assuming it was just requestor).
After you have done that run:
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yagna app-key list
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and verify that in the table like the one below, your new app-key is bound to your mainnet Ethereum address
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┌─────────────────────┬────────────────┬───────────────────────────┬───────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
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│  name               │  key           │  id                       │  role     │  created                     │
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├─────────────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼───────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
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│  requestor-mainnet  │  your-app-key  │  0x-your-mainnet-address  │  manager  │  2021-07-06T11:41:52.252257  │
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└─────────────────────┴────────────────┴───────────────────────────┴───────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
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Lastly, remember to set the new app-key in your environment (or in an other way you supply the app key to your requestor agent app).
Running your requestor on mainnet
In order for the below commands and code to work, your yagna daemon must have the mainnet accounts correctly initialized using the instructions above.
After you have taken care of the above, the one last thing that you'll need to do if you want to request tasks from the providers running on the mainnet is enabling the mainnet driver in your requestor agent.
The examples we bundle with our APIs (the Blender rendering and Hashcat password recovery) expose two command-line arguments, analogous to yagna daemon itself: --driver and --network.
There is a an additional caveat here though.
In order to clearly separate our production network, to which the majority of the provider nodes run by our users connect by default, from the testnet subnet the sole purpose of which should be testing your apps, we have introduced a concept of a "subnet tag".
Whereas the limited number of our own test providers that we make available to our prospective requestors use the devnet-beta subnet (which is included by default in our requestor-facing examples), the mainnet providers use public-beta subnet by default.
Thus, to leverage the computing power of the mainnet providers in the Golem network, you must provide the subnet tag used by those mainnet provider nodes - public-beta.
Therefore, combining those parameters, in order to run our examples on mainnet, you'd launch them using e.g.:
Python
JS
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python3 blender.py --payment-network=mainnet --subnet-tag=public-beta
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yarn js:blender --payment-network mainnet --subnet-tag public-beta
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Requestor agent code
As for your own requestor agent code, you'll need to supply the appropriate payment_driver , payment_network and subnet_tag parameters to Golem.
Python
JS
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async with Golem(
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    [...],
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    payment_network="mainnet",
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    payment_driver="zksync",
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    subnet_tag="public-beta",
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)
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new Executor({
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    driver: "zksync",
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    network: "mainnet",
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    subnet_tag: "public-beta",
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})
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