🌊-Liquidity Providers
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This guide is written for anyone looking to run a opendex liquidity provider setup entirely via the command line and create a revenue stream via automated arbitrage.
Default: Light setup using and a random open eth provider. This keeps the setup light-weight & cheap, but creates a certain dependency on other people's full nodes.
Optional: Full setup using , and . Requires more time and resources, but keeps the setup trustless.
Simnet. Status: down until further notice
Testnet. Status: up | Required CPUs: 2 for light, 4 for full | RAM: 2GB for light, 16GB for full | Disk: 1GB for light, 200GB for full | Initial Sync Time: 15 mins for light, 24h for full
bitcoin testnet 3, litecoin testnet 4, ethereum rinkeby. Faucets: , , or . If you need help or some testnet coins, hit us up on !
Mainnet. Status: down | Required CPUs: 2 for light, 4 for full | RAM: 2GB for light, 16GB for full | Disk: 1GB for light, 1TB for full | Initial Sync Time: 30 mins for light, 72h for full
Down until all breaking changes are merged and some weeks on testnet didn't reveal major issues.
Since liquidity providers should be online 24/7 and we are ushering in a post-cloud era, we recommend setting up a power-efficient linux box connected to your router. No special configurations, like port forwardings, are necessary. Running your opendexd setup in the cloud is obviously possible, just not something we encourage to do.
: This guide walks you through setting up an arm64-based Raspberry Pi3/4. Costs: 65€-290€
🎚️ Custom: If you are using a different device or a cloud VPS:
Check the hardware requirements for the different networks and modes above
The full setup requires a SSD for geth being able to sync. For the light setup, a regular HDD/SD card is fine.
If you are using a VPS for testnet or mainnet, you can switch to 2 cores & 4 GB RAM after initial sync, given you use default settings.
We currently support amd64 (also called x86/x64) and arm64 (also called aarch64/armv8), which should cover most devices and services.
Docker & Docker Compose.
From here we assume that your device is running with docker set up. Check the guides in the hardware section above if your device is not ready yet.
Start the environment with
The setup will ask you to choose the network:
Sync light clients (default):
And then guide you through some basics:
When creating a new opendexd SEED, the setup asks you to set a password to encrypt your environment's private keys and to write down your mnemonic phrase. This serves as backup for your opendexd node key and wallets (your on-chain assets). This is your last resort in case something happens to your device. Keep it somewhere safe!
Then you'll be asked to enter the path to your backup drive, e.g. a previously mounted USB drive:
Then the setup might restart clients and ask you to enter your password once more before the CTL
Use the status command to check on the your setup's health and sync progress. The default light setup should show Ready after some seconds:
If you configured the full setup via config file or cli parameters, the sync will start fast and get slower towards the end. You might see 0.00% progress for several minutes at first.
After a while you should see all three full-nodes syncing nicely.
Bitcoind/Litecoind should finish syncing within 12h, geth in about 72h on powerful hardware. A Pi4 needs about twice that long.
The CLI takes opendex-cli commands without the need to prepend opendex-cli, e.g. simply type getinfo to get basic information about your opendex node. Run help to get an always up-to-date list of commands. Append -j to any command to get JSON instead of the formatted output, e.g. using listpeers to see other opendexd nodes on the network:
Start by depositing some funds into your opendex node:
Check existing orders for all activated pairs with the command orderbook. It might take several seconds to see orders after opendexd was started due to the decentralized nature of the order exchange. Use orderbook btc/usdt to show the order book for BTC/USDT only:
Use getbalance to check your balance before the swap.
Issue a regular limit order with e.g. sell 0.1 btc/usdt 7171 to sell 0.1 btc for a price of 7171 USDT per BTC. If your order was matched, settlement shouldn't take longer than a couple of seconds.
Use getbalance to check your balance after the swap. You are now owning 0.1 BTC less and 717 USDT more.
Re-enter opendex-ctl (bash ~/opendexd.sh) and accept the prompt to add arby. After a minute you should see arby's automatically issued orders based on your Binance and OpenDEX balance via listorders. Completed OpenDEX trades are listed in tradehistory. You can follow actions taken by arby with logs arby.
No need to open/forward ports
An overview of all available commands within opendex ctl can be printed by typing help in opendex ctl. It allows to use client's cli (e.g. lncli), check client status, logs and many more.
The opendex-docker setup uses the fixed home directory ~/.opendex-docker where blockchain & wallet data is stored in by default. Customize the wallet & chain data directory by creating a global opendex-docker config file with cp ~/.opendex-docker/sample-opendex-docker.conf ~/.opendex-docker/opendex-docker.conf, then edit dir.
All config options can temporary be set via cli parameters; run bash opendex.sh --help to get an overview of all available parameters. To e.g. use another directory for your mainnet environment, you can run bash opendex.sh --mainnet-dir /path/to/temp/mainnet/dir.
To permanently change options on a network level, create a network-specific config file with the latest options, e.g. for mainnet with cp ~/.opendex-docker/mainnet/sample-mainnet.conf ~/.opendex-docker/mainnet/mainnet.conf, then edit mainnet.conf.
If you only have a small SSD available (<300GB) for a full setup, you can place your entire setup on a HDD, except for a small part of geth's data, which needs to be located on a fast SSD:
Sample config full setup:
You may use external full-nodes (including infura).
Sample config of your external bitcoind/litecoind to work with the defaults in the <network>.conf file:
Permanently set the alias opendex to launch opendex ctl from anywhere: Add the line alias opendex="bash ~/opendex.sh" to the end of ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_aliases on Linux and bash_profile on Mac, then source the file.
You can exit from opendex ctl any time and re-enter with bash ~/opendex.sh; the environment will stay up.
A reboot of your host machine does not restart your opendex-docker environment by default. You will need to run bash ~/opendex.sh and unlock your environment with your password.
Permanently stop the environment by typing down in opendex ctl. A restart can be achieved with down first and then running bash ~/opendex.sh again.
opendex-docker only uses offical opendexd releases for mainnet. Testnet is running the latest opendexd master and is updated frequently.
Docker might not play nicely with a VPN you are running on the host machine. If you see Failed to launch environment, try disconnecting the VPN.
If you decide to remove opendex-docker from your machine, run the following commands when the environment is down:
: This guide walks you through setting up a powerful amd64-based Mini PC. Costs: 180€-465€
Version >= 18.09 on Linux or Windows 10 . If you do not have docker & docker-compose installed yet and you are using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, install these via sudo apt install docker.io. If you are using any version besides Ubuntu 20.04, follow the official . Also make sure that the current user can run docker commands. Test with docker run hello-world. If this fails, . This guide was written using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
The entered backup drive location is persisted as backup-dir = "/media/USB/" in mainnet.conf and can be changed any time. Alternatively, you can consider running your environment on two hard drives in to protect against data loss.
The deposit command for BTC & LTC is powered by . Boltz will automatically open a balanced lightning channel to you, if you don't have a channel yet. This can take several minutes to complete and we'd kindly ask you to wait patiently for your funds to appear in the getbalance overview. If you want to follow what is happening under the hood, you can do so by typing logs boltz. For ETH, currently one still needs to trigger a manual channel creation in a second step after funds were deposited:
In this final step we are connecting your opendex setup to your CEX (Centralized EXchage) account via a liquidity provider bot called . Arby enables "transfer" of orders from the CEX into OpenDEX and creates an arbitrage revenue stream for you as liquidity provider. Arby issues orders on the OpenDEX network based on the CEX price, adding a margin as premium. When orders are filled on OpenDEX, arby takes care of executing a counter trade on the CEX to lock in profits. At the time of writing, arby supports connecting to and , but more exchanges will be added over time; check arby's for an up-to-date list. We'll use Binance as example in the following. You will need funds for at least one supported asset on Binance (e.g. BTC) for arby to start issuing orders. To activate arby, exit from opendexd ctl and run cp ~/.opendexd-docker/mainnet/sample-mainnet.conf ~/.opendexd-docker/mainnet/mainnet.conf to create a config file for your environment. Then edit the following options in mainnet.conf:
Check the official to learn more about how arby works.
Please give us feedback and report bugs by running report from within opendex ctl or join our dedicated "-help" channel on !
If you are syncing the full setup, and geth shows sync status 99.99% for longer than 72h, you are probably running geth on a drive that is too slow for geth to catch up with the chain. In this case, down the environment and run a performance test of the disk as desribed . If results are below the 100 MB/s mark, you can either switch to a faster SSD, use the default light setup connecting to an open geth node or use infura.