Deprecated

This network dashboard is no longer maintained. See Concordium scan for the replacement.

Concordium Dashboard

Network and Chain Dashboard for displaying stats, summaries, and visualizations of the blockchain network and state.

• Network: A table view of nodes which are participating in the data collection. Clicking a node in the table opens a full screen view with the details of that node.
• Chain: A live visualization of the chain which displays new blocks as they're being submitted to the network. The blocks are colored based on their finalization status and a number of dots illustrate the consensus that has been reached around a given block. Clicking a block displays the contents of the block in the Node Explorer below the visualization.

The app is written in Elm (and packaged using webpack).

Install and run

From the project root, run

npm install

The app relies on two backend services; the "Middleware" and the "Collector Backend", which are described below. The development server will proxy some requests to either of these and must be provided with URLs for these through environment variables CONCORDIUM_MIDDLEWARE_URL and CONCORDIUM_COLLECTOR_BACKEND_URL.

Local

To use the development server with a local middleware and collector backend run:

MIN_VERSION_INCLUDED_IN_STATS=3 CONCORDIUM_MIDDLEWARE_URL='http://localhost:8081' CONCORDIUM_COLLECTOR_BACKEND_URL='http://localhost:12000' npm run dev

Then open the app (http://localhost:3001) in a browser. The app refreshes automatically when files are changed.

The MIN_VERSION_INCLUDED_IN_STATS variable specifies the minimal version of the node that allows it to be included in the calculation of summaries at the top of the page, e.g., current finalized height.

Mainnet

To use the development server with the Mainnet middleware and collector backend run:

MIN_VERSION_INCLUDED_IN_STATS=3 npm run dev:mainnet

Then open the app (http://localhost:3001) in a browser. The app refreshes automatically when files are changed.

Testnet

To use the development server with the Testnet middleware and collector backend run:

MIN_VERSION_INCLUDED_IN_STATS=3 npm run dev:testnet

Then open the app (http://localhost:3001) in a browser. The app refreshes automatically when files are changed.

Stagenet

Stagenet is for internal use and requires VPN to access.

To use the development server with the Stagenet middleware and collector backend run:

MIN_VERSION_INCLUDED_IN_STATS=3 npm run dev:stagenet

Then open the app (http://localhost:3001) in a browser. The app refreshes automatically when files are changed.

Other common build/run targets include:

• MIN_VERSION_INCLUDED_IN_STATS=3 npm run build - Build the app in production mode and put it into ./dist.
• npm run formatcheck - Checks the elm formatting.

See the script section of package.json for all targets as well as their definitions.

Configuration

The client app may be built in production or development mode (based on the NODE_ENV environment variable).

Architecture

The dashboard collects data from two different backend services:

• Collector Backend: All current state (participating nodes and their stats, including their best block etc.). This data is polled (every second).
• Middleware: Block contents for the Block Explorer.

Note that the dashboard server only serves the frontend application itself - all dynamic data come from the services above.

A complete setup consists of (diagram):

• One or more nodes.
• One collector for each node that we want to participate data. This collector polls the node and pushes the state to the collector backend.
• One collector backend for keeping the state from the collectors.
• One middleware instance connected to one of the nodes.

Local setup

Detailed instructions on setting up a local node/baker are given in the readme of the concordium-node repository.

The easiest solution is to start a local cluster using the docker-compose scripts in the root of that repo. This will start all components except for the middleware. The scripts support multiple different cluster sizes; to spin up 5 nodes, use:

EXTRA_ARGS=--debug NUM_BAKERS=5 DESIRED_PEERS=4 docker-compose -f docker-compose.develop.yml up --scale baker=5 --force-recreate

The middleware lives in the concordium-client repo and may be started (from the root of that project) using the command

NODE_URL=127.0.0.1:$PORT stack run middleware

where $PORT is the GRPC port of the node (default: 10000).

If the docker-compose scripts are used, then scripts/bootMiddleware.sh will run the above command with a working port.

The node and collector (backend) is defined in the concordium-node repo.

Note that you need to set a feature flag to build the collector (backend).

Docker build

The Dashboard is deployed on Kubernetes using a dockerized build. The docker file k8s.Dockerfile builds dist locally first before copying it into the image.

Requirements and credits

• Node 14+

• The project structure was initially derived from fullstack-typescript, replacing React with Elm.