frostfs-dev-env/docs/notary.md

Notary service in chains

Notary service is a service that provides on-chain network assistance to form multisignature transactions. Inner Ring (Alphabet) nodes use multisignature transactions to create containers, approve balance changes, update network map, tick epochs, etc. With notary service, it takes up to seven times fewer transactions to do these operations. Notary service calculates the exact amount of GAS to execute transaction, therefore operations are cheaper (withdraw fee with notary is less than 0.5 GAS; withdraw fee without notary is up to 7.0 GAS).

By default, main chain service is running without notary service, and side chain running with notary service. However, you can change that in configuration.

Disable notary service in side chain

To disable notary service in side chain do these steps.

1. Update .env and choose notary disabled chain dump for side chain.

MORPH_CHAIN_URL="https://github.com/nspcc-dev/neofs-contract/releases/download/v0.9.0/devenv_sidechain_notary_disabled.gz"

Make sure to update chain dump files with make get target.

2. Update service/morph_chain/protocol.privnet.yml and disable notary settings and state root in header.

ProtocolConfiguration:
  StateRootInHeader: false
  P2PSigExtensions: false
ApplicationConfiguration:
  P2PNotary:
    Enabled: false

3. Update services/ir/.ir.env and disable notary support.

NEOFS_IR_WITHOUT_NOTARY=true

Chain dump without notary service does not have predefined network map. Therefore, you need to wait about 5 minutes until new epoch tick with updated network map.

All helper commands such as make tick.epoch or make update.epoch_duration are designed as multisignature transactions, so you can't use them without notary.

Enable notary service in main chain

To enable notary service in main chain do these steps.

1. Update .env and choose notary enabled chain dump for main chain.

CHAIN_URL="https://github.com/nspcc-dev/neofs-contract/releases/download/v0.9.0/devenv_mainchain.gz"

Make sure to update chain dump files with make get target.

2. Update service/chain/protocol.privnet.yml and enable notary settings.

ProtocolConfiguration:
  P2PSigExtensions: true
ApplicationConfiguration:
  P2PNotary:
    Enabled: true

3. Update services/ir/.ir.env and enable main chain notary support.

NEOFS_IR_WITHOUT_MAIN_NOTARY=false

Main chain generates a block once per 15 seconds, so Inner Ring takes about 15-30 seconds to make a notary deposit in main chain after startup. Then neofs-dev-env is ready to work.