Local devnet

This guide explains how to set up a local pod development environment for testing and development purposes.

A local devnet allows you to run a whole pod network on your development machine. It is perfect for development and testing smart contracts or applications before deploying them to public networks.

Setup

Prerequisites

Before setting up your local pod environment, ensure you have:

• Linux or macOS operating system

• Git installed

• curl installed (for interacting with the JSON-RPC API)

• Foundry installed (for cast command)

Installation

Download the Binary

Download the latest pod release from GitHub:

# Create a directory for pod
mkdir ~/pod && cd ~/pod

# Download the latest release (update URL with actual release)
curl -LO https://github.com/pod-network/pod/releases/latest/download/pod-<version>-<platform>

# Make the binary executable
chmod +x pod-<version>-<platform>

# Optional: Add to your PATH
mv pod-<version>-<platform> /usr/local/bin/pod

Configuration

Create a configuration file named pod.toml in your working directory:

[network]
rpc_host = "127.0.0.1"
rpc_port = 8545

[client]
# The client will automatically create accounts with initial balances
initial_accounts = 10
initial_balance = "100000000000000000000" # 100 ETH in wei

Running a Local Network

Starting the Network

Pod provides a convenient script for starting a local development network:

pod devnet start

The script will:

1. Start a local network with multiple validator nodes

2. Initialize test accounts with balances

3. Display connection information and account details

You should see output similar to this:

Starting local pod development network...
RPC endpoint: http://127.0.0.1:8545

Available test accounts:
Account #0: 0xf39Fd6e51aad88F6F4ce6aB8827279cffFb92266 (100 ETH)
Private Key: 0xac0974bec39a17e36ba4a6b4d238ff944bacb478cbed5efcae784d7bf4f2ff80

Account #1: 0x70997970C51812dc3A010C7d01b50e0d17dc79C8 (100 ETH)
Private Key: 0x59c6995e998f97a5a0044966f0945389dc9e86dae88c7a8412f4603b6b78690d

...

Local network is ready!

Interacting with the Network

You can interact with your local pod network using standard JSON-RPC calls. Here are some examples using both curl and cast:

curl

# Get chain ID
curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8545 \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "method":"eth_chainId",
    "params":[],
    "id":1
  }'

# Check account balance
curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8545 \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "method":"eth_getBalance",
    "params":["0xf39Fd6e51aad88F6F4ce6aB8827279cffFb92266", "latest"],
    "id":1
  }'

cast

# Get chain ID
cast chain-id --rpc-url http://127.0.0.1:8545

# Check account balance
cast balance 0xf39Fd6e51aad88F6F4ce6aB8827279cffFb92266 \
  --rpc-url http://127.0.0.1:8545

Stopping the network

To stop the local network:

pod devnet stop

The local development network is intended for testing purposes only. Never use the generated private keys on production networks, as they are publicly known.

Additional Configuration

For more advanced configuration options, you can modify the pod.toml file:

[network]
rpc_host = "127.0.0.1"
rpc_port = 8545
chain_id = 1293

[client]
initial_accounts = 10
initial_balance = "100000000000000000000"
block_time = 2  # Time between attestations in seconds

[logging]
level = "info"  # Available: error, warn, info, debug, trace

Next Steps

After setting up your local development environment, you might want to:

• Interact with the JSON-RPC API of the local node.
• Use our how to guides to develop applications.