Dumbnet Walkthrough

Dumbnet runs the same pipeline as fakenet against the live network, using a real seed phrase for key derivation. Use it once your kernel is stable on fakenet — every transaction has economic stakes.

1. Generate or reuse a key pair:

nockchain-wallet keygen

Capture the seed phrase out-of-band; you'll feed it to the hull via a file flag rather than vesl.toml.

2. Stash the seed phrase in a permission-locked file:

mkdir -p ~/.config/vesl && touch ~/.config/vesl/dumbnet.seed
chmod 600 ~/.config/vesl/dumbnet.seed
$EDITOR ~/.config/vesl/dumbnet.seed

The file form keeps the value out of ps output. Resolution order is: --seed-phrase-file <path> > --seed-phrase <phrase> > VESL_SEED_PHRASE > [wallet] seed_phrase = "..." in vesl.toml. Avoid the last form for production — it pins live key material in a file that may end up in source control.

3. Configure your hull:

nock_home = "../nockchain"
settlement_mode = "dumbnet"
chain_endpoint = "https://your-nockchain-rpc.example"   # required
tx_fee = 256
coinbase_timelock_min = 1
accept_timeout_secs = 900   # dumbnet default; blocks land every ~10 min

[wallet]
account = 0

chain_endpoint is required for dumbnet — there is no compiled-in default. accept_timeout_secs = 900 matches the live-network block cadence; a settle that triggers a tx won't return its effect until the network accepts.

4. Run the hull, supplying the seed phrase via the file flag:

cargo +nightly run --release -- \
  --settlement-mode dumbnet \
  --seed-phrase-file ~/.config/vesl/dumbnet.seed

For deployment, lock down both the seed file and the host running the hull — the BIP-39/BIP-44 derivation gives the hull spend authority over any UTXO locked to the resulting pkh.

See Also

• Build & Run — kernel compile and settlement-mode selection.
• Serve Subcommand — running the dumbnet-configured hull as an HTTP server; the same seed-resolution rules apply to the Serve arm.
• Fakenet Walkthrough — the local-testnet counterpart; iterate there before pointing at dumbnet.
• Reference / vesl.toml — full field list including the [wallet] schema.