How to relinquish control of a node’s main account to an external account, so that the external account’s private key is never required in the node setup process.
This is useful, for example, for service providers (also known as staking service providers or hosting service providers) that work in a non-custodial manner. This is, customers hire the service provider to setup nodes for them and have any node rewards sent to their main accounts, without ever sending their account keys to the service provider.
This guide is intended for the service provider setting up a node on behalf of their customer.
There are many mechanisms to achieve this in Symbol. This page explains the simplest one, assuming that the customer is not tech-savvy (and therefore prefers not to use command-line tools like symbol-cli), and that the customer’s key are not allowed on an online machine.
Note
The process is even simpler if the customer’s key are allowed to be online.
A guide will soon be added to this page describing this scenario.
In summary, once the node is completely setup, full control of the node’s main account will be transferred to the customer account (called external account) by turning main into a Multisig Account:
The service provider will prepare a transaction for offline signing and send it to the customer.
The customer signs the transaction using their Wallet from an offline machine, and returns the signature.
The service provider announces the transaction.
On the Node machine:
Have a running Symbol node, set up using the Running a secure node guide.
On the Configuration machine:
Have symbol-cli installed. This has already been installed in the Running a secure node guide.
Have a symbol-cli profile for the node’s main account. This too has already been done in the guide.
Make sure the correct profile is the default one (use symbol-cli profile setdefault or add the --profile parameter to all commands below).
On the Customer’s machine:
Have the Symbol Desktop Wallet installed and configured with the customer’s account (external account).
So far, the node’s main account is a regular account. A MultisigAccountModificationTransaction will be announced that will turn it into a Multisig Account with a single cosignatory: the external account.
This means that any operation on the main account will require the signature of the external account.
This transaction will be prepared by the service provider using symbol-cli and sent to the customer for signing.
Notes on this transaction:
The --max-fee 1000000 parameter means that 1 XYM will be paid for the transaction. Feel free to use a different number after reading the fees documentation.
The default transaction deadline in symbol-cli is 2 hours. Use the --deadline parameter if you need more time to get the customer’s signature.
Run this from the configuration machine:
symbol-cli transaction multisigmodification --max-fee 1000000 \
--mode normal --min-removal-delta 1 --min-approval-delta 1 \
--action Add --aggregate-type AGGREGATE_COMPLETE \
--cosignatory-addresses ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●
Use the external account address as cosignatory and do not announce the transaction:
✔ Enter your wallet password: … *********
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ AGGREGATE_COMPLETE │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Max fee: │ 1,000,000 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Network type: │ TEST_NET │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Deadline: │ 2021-03-27 14:51:01.099 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Inner transaction 1 of 1 - MULTISIG_ACCOUNT_MODIFICATION │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ [Inner tx. 1 of 1] Min approval delta: │ 1 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ [Inner tx. 1 of 1] Min removal delta: │ 1 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ [Inner tx. 1 of 1] Address addition (1 / 1): │ TAJ3DW-DCRWBU-V6CXBQ-TNAAKH-UPRPQ6-I2QW7V-7JA │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Signature details │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Payload: │ F800000000000000FAE63B1603A8FA30BF5F8A7E5C7906349AAA89591BD20651 │
│ │ 013704F4E03894206D6543339716A8E4391E53873F8F43BEC10D9706F74764C7 │
│ │ 940C07A756F4950ACC6D13D64FB9BF69B72846C3FE99127D48C3293F473D528F │
│ │ B902600CB7DA1033000000000198414140420F0000000000EB39311C0A000000 │
│ │ 5B8F6FEBA2C4D0C7E1C084DA1E828B68C46EE7EE247811BE3DBDCE913E40E027 │
│ │ 50000000000000005000000000000000CC6D13D64FB9BF69B72846C3FE99127D │
│ │ 48C3293F473D528FB902600CB7DA103300000000019855410101010000000000 │
│ │ 9813B1D8628D834AF8570C26D00147A3E2F8791A85BF5FA4 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Hash: │ 13241107ACC87B4F7B047C335856326D86AC0F4FF2C0F52CCA1D7FC4E6491CB8 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Signer: │ CC6D13D64FB9BF69B72846C3FE99127D48C3293F473D528FB902600CB7DA1033 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
✔ Do you want to announce this transaction? … no
Select all the text in the Payload box and paste it into a new text file named payload.txt. Remove all spaces and other decorations to obtain a single line containing only numbers and uppercase letters:
F800000000000000FAE63B1603A8FA30BF5F8A7E5C7906349AAA89591BD20651013704F4E03894206D6543339716A8E4391E53873F8F43BEC10D9706F74764C7940C07A756F4950ACC6D13D64FB9BF69B72846C3FE99127D48C3293F473D528FB902600CB7DA1033000000000198414140420F0000000000EB39311C0A0000005B8F6FEBA2C4D0C7E1C084DA1E828B68C46EE7EE247811BE3DBDCE913E40E02750000000000000005000000000000000CC6D13D64FB9BF69B72846C3FE99127D48C3293F473D528FB902600CB7DA1033000000000198554101010100000000009813B1D8628D834AF8570C26D00147A3E2F8791A85BF5FA4
This payload cannot be announced without a signature from the external account, since it has been added as a cosignatory.
Send payload.txt to the customer, as a plain text file.
The customer uses their Symbol Desktop Wallet to create a signature for the received payload:
Open the Desktop Wallet and click on Go to offline transactions on the top right corner.
Select the Cosign transaction tab.
Paste the full payload into the big box labeled Paste the transaction payload.
Click on Import payload.
Select the Profile name and the external account (in the From: box).
Enter the wallet’s Password and click on Confirm.
A QR code and a long line of text will be obtained, looking similar to this one:
{"parentHash":"13241107ACC87B4F7B047C335856326D86AC0F4FF2C0F52CCA1D7FC4E6491CB8","signature":"1D8FD3A815C45B9FFCCD48FF9DE24FAD172D373E889D25F3005FDAA0F87DB70AB9ABD2ECB79E467577FCE49B760729706247B24479CB32A88A4A1C1974D4220A","signerPublicKey":"7F71566C57A8E5B03EADBA28E4CA057428DDB37C766604B2827BC2D79BB195B8","version":{"lower":0,"higher":0}}
Copy the whole line of text (for example by triple-clicking on it) and paste it into a new text file named signature.txt.
Send signature.txt back to the service provider, as a plain text file.
Announce the multisig modification transaction from any online machine that has installed symbol-cli and has an announcer profile (as explained in Running a secure node):
symbol-cli transaction payload --sync --announce --profile C
? Enter the transaction payload: F8000000000...
SUCCESS Transaction loaded:
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ AGGREGATE_COMPLETE │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Max fee: │ 1,000,000 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Network type: │ TEST_NET │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Deadline: │ 2021-03-27 14:51:01.099 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Signer: │ TBGPYD-CO35V2-AMOYEJ-LEM44H-372M3I-6RWVFY-QCY │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Inner transaction 1 of 1 - MULTISIG_ACCOUNT_MODIFICATION │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ [Inner tx. 1 of 1] Min approval delta: │ 1 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ [Inner tx. 1 of 1] Min removal delta: │ 1 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ [Inner tx. 1 of 1] Address addition (1 / 1): │ TAJ3DW-DCRWBU-V6CXBQ-TNAAKH-UPRPQ6-I2QW7V-7JA │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
? Cosignature JSON array in square brackets (Enter to skip): [{"parentHash"...
When prompted for the transaction payload, paste the contents of payload.txt (the long line of hexadecimal characters).
When prompted for the cosignature, paste the contents of signature.txt (the long line of JSON text that the customer sent back), BUT ENCLOSE IT IN SQUARE BRACKETS.
This is, the cosignature should start with [ and end with ].
After a few seconds you should get:
...
SUCCESS Transaction announced
SUCCESS Transaction confirmed
From this point onwards, no operation can be performed on the node’s main account without authorization from the external account, which is controlled by the customer.
The customer can perform operations on the main account using the Symbol Desktop Wallet and its multisig facilities.
