Running a Relayer

Hermes Relayer Tutorial

In this tutorial will be provided information how easy and fast setup Hermes IBC relayer.

Hermes Official Documentation: https://hermes.informal.systems/

Pre-requisites:

Add system user for Hermes:

adduser hermes
usermod -aG sudo hermes

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install librust-openssl-dev build-essential git -y

Install Rust (https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install):

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Hermes Installation

git clone https://github.com/informalsystems/ibc-rs.git hermes
cd hermes
git checkout v0.13.0   ### Can check latest version https://hermes.informal.systems/installation.html#install-by-downloading
cargo build --release
sudo cp target/release/hermes /usr/bin

Hermes Configuration

Make Hermes config directory:

mkdir -p $HOME/.hermes

Create default Hermes configuration, in this example are created IBC relayer between Stargaze <-> Osmosis and Stargaze <-> Juno.

Don't forget to change ip address to your RPC service if it's not hosted on local VPS and "memo_prefix = ' IBC service'"

cat <<EOF > /$HOME/.hermes/config.toml
[global]
log_level = 'debug'

[mode]

[mode.clients]
enabled = false
refresh = false
misbehaviour = false

[mode.connections]
enabled = false

[mode.channels]
enabled = false

[mode.packets]
enabled = true
clear_interval = 100
clear_on_start = true
tx_confirmation = false

[rest]
enabled = true
host = '127.0.0.1'
port = 3000

[telemetry]
enabled = false
host = '127.0.0.1'
port = 3001

[[chains]]
id = 'osmosis-1'
rpc_addr = 'http://localhost:26657'
websocket_addr = 'ws://localhost:26657/websocket'
grpc_addr = 'http://localhost:9090'
rpc_timeout = '30s'
account_prefix = 'osmo'
key_name = 'relayer'
store_prefix = 'ibc'
max_gas = 15000000
max_msg_num = 10
gas_price = { price = 0.0001, denom = 'uosmo' }
gas_adjustment = 1
clock_drift = '15s'
trusting_period = '9days'
trust_threshold = { numerator = '1', denominator = '3' }
memo_prefix = '<Service provider> IBC service'
[chains.packet_filter]
policy = 'allow'
list = [
  ['transfer', 'channel-75']
]

[[chains]]
id = 'juno-1'
rpc_addr = 'http://localhost:26657'
grpc_addr = 'http://localhost:9090'
websocket_addr = 'ws://localhost:26657/websocket'
rpc_timeout = '30s'
account_prefix = 'juno'
key_name = 'relayer'
store_prefix = 'ibc'
max_tx_size = 180000
max_gas = 2000000
gas_price = { price = 0.0025, denom = 'ujuno' }
gas_adjustment = 0.1
clock_drift = '15s'
trusting_period = '14days'
trust_threshold = { numerator = '1', denominator = '3' }
memo_prefix = '<Service provider> IBC service'
[chains.packet_filter]
policy = 'allow'
list = [
  ['transfer', 'channel-20']
  ]

[[chains]]
id = 'stargaze-1'
rpc_addr = 'http://localhost:26657'
grpc_addr = 'http://localhost:9090'
websocket_addr = 'ws://localhost:26657/websocket'
rpc_timeout = '10s'
account_prefix = 'stars'
key_name = 'relayer'
store_prefix = 'ibc'
max_gas = 2000000
gas_price = { price = 0.0025, denom = 'ustars' }
gas_adjustment = 0.1
clock_drift = '300s'
trusting_period = '10days'
trust_threshold = { numerator = '1', denominator = '3' }
memo_prefix = '<Service provider> IBC service'
[chains.packet_filter]
policy = 'allow'
list = [
  ['transfer', 'channel-0'],['transfer', 'channel-5']
  ]
EOF

You can validate your Hermes configuration file with:

hermes config validate
INFO ThreadId(01) using default configuration from '/home/relay/.hermes/config.toml'
Success: "validation passed successfully"

Add your relaying-wallets to Hermes' keyring:

Best practice is to use the same mnemonic over all networks, do not use your relaying-addresses for anything else because it might lead to mismatched account sequence errors.

hermes keys restore osmosis-1 -m "12 or 24 magic words"
hermes keys restore juno-1 -m "12 or 24 magic words"
hermes keys restore stargaze-1 -m "12 or 24 magic words"

Final steps

Create daemon service file:

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/hermes.service > /dev/null <<EOF
[Unit]
  Description=Hermes relayer daemon
  After=network-online.target
[Service]
  User=$USER
  ExecStart=/usr/bin/hermes start
  Restart=on-failure
  RestartSec=3
  LimitNOFILE=4096
[Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Start Hermes service:

sudo systemctl enable hermes
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart hermes && journalctl -u hermes.service -f