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Machine Accounts for Existing Node Operators

Instructions for existing Node Operators to follow to create a machine account for their collection or consensus nodes.

The Flow Epoch Preparation Protocol requires that collection and consensus nodes use an automated machine account to participate in important processes required to start the next epoch. (QC and DKG, respectively)

Starting on Thursday, August 26th 2021, all collector and consensus nodes who register with Flow Port will automatically create and initialize this machine account as part of their node registration.

If you have an existing consensus or collection node that you registered with Flow Port before Thursday August 26th, you will need to create this Machine Account manually in order to participate in epochs. You will need to create one Machine Account for each consensus or collection node that you operate.

This guide will walk you through creating a Machine Account and getting it set up.

During this process you will generate a new private key which will have sole control over your machine account. This private key will be stored on the machine you use to run your node, alongside your staking and networking keys. Loss of any of these keys (staking, networking, or machine account) will require you to un-stake your tokens, start a completely new node, and register the new node to continue participating in the Flow network, which takes multiple weeks.

Downloading Bootstrap Utility

If you have downloaded the bootstrapping kit previously, ensure that you do this step again to get the latest copy of the bootstrapping kit since there have been significant changes to it.
curl -sL -O storage.googleapis.com/flow-genesis-bootstrap/boot-tools.tar
tar -xvf boot-tools.tar
CheckSHA256
sha256sum ./boot-tools/bootstrap
4f7034f6977fd1fc0980a2a38640db8d085714f7d928a67365a083886cb85814  ./boot-tools/bootstrap

sha256sum ./boot-tools/transit
d1ef25d67fe339e4ae5bff150fdf814e66dba3e490965d4bb965ed34ea181e03  ./boot-tools/transit

Generate Machine Account key

You will need to generate a Machine account private key using the bootstrap utility.

Ensure you run the following commands on the machine you use to run your node software. The bootstrap directory passed to the -o flag must be the same bootstrap directory used by your node. The default location is /var/flow/bootstrap, but double-check your setup before continuing.

GenerateMachineAccountKey
$./boot-tools/bootstrap machine-account-key -o ./bootstrap
<nil> INF generated machine account private key
<nil> INF encoded machine account public key for entry to Flow Port machineAccountPubKey=f847b84031d9f47b88435e4ea828310529d2c60e806395da50d3dd0dd2f32e2de336fb44eb06488645673850897d7cc017701d7e6272a1ab7f2f125aede46363e973444a02038203e8
<nil> INF wrote file bootstrap/private-root-information/private-node-info_6f6e98c983dbd9aa69320452949b81abeab2ac591a247f55f19f4dbf0b477d26/node-machine-account-key.priv.json

$tree ./bootstrap/
./bootstrap
├── private-root-information
│   └── private-node-info_ab6e0b15837de7e5261777cb65665b318cf3f94492dde27c1ea13830e989bbf9
│       ├── node-info.priv.json
│       └── node-machine-account-key.priv.json
└── public-root-information
    ├── node-id
    └── node-info.pub.ab6e0b15837de7e5261777cb65665b318cf3f94492dde27c1ea13830e989bbf9.json

3 directories, 4 files

Create Machine Account

You will now need to copy the Machine account public key displayed in the terminal output and head over to Flow Port to submit a transaction to create a Machine Account. For example, from the example above, we would copy 0x2743786d1ff1bf7d702... from this line:

Example
<nil> INF machine account public key: 0x2743786d1ff1bf7d7026d693a774210eaa54728343859baab62e2df7f71a370651f4c7fd239d07af170e484eedd4f3c2df47103f6c39baf2eb2a50f67bbcba6a

This process will create your machine account for you and show you your machine account's address, which you will need to save for the next step.

Finalize Machine Account setup

You will now need to use the bootstrap utility to run machine-account with the created address to finalize the set up of your Machine account.

$ ./boot-tools/bootstrap machine-account --address ${YOUR_MACHINE_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS} -o ./bootstrap
Example
$./boot-tools/bootstrap machine-account --address 0x1de23de44985c7e7 -o ./bootstrap
<nil> INF read machine account private key json
<nil> DBG encoded public machine account key machineAccountPubKey=2743786d1ff1bf7d7026d693a774210eaa54728343859baab62e2df7f71a370651f4c7fd239d07af170e484eedd4f3c2df47103f6c39baf2eb2a50f67bbcba6a
<nil> INF wrote file bootstrap/private-root-information/private-node-info_6f6e98c983dbd9aa69320452949b81abeab2ac591a247f55f19f4dbf0b477d26/node-machine-account-info.priv.json

$tree ./bootstrap/
./bootstrap
├── private-root-information
│   └── private-node-info_d60bd55ee616c5c297cae1d5cfb7f65e7e04014d9c4abe595af2fd83f3cfe160
│       ├── node-info.priv.json
│       ├── node-machine-account-info.priv.json
│       └── node-machine-account-key.priv.json
└── public-root-information
    ├── node-id
    └── node-info.pub.d60bd55ee616c5c297cae1d5cfb7f65e7e04014d9c4abe595af2fd83f3cfe160.json

3 directories, 5 files

After running this step, you should see the node-machine-account-info.priv.json file in your bootstrap directory as shown above.