Hey folks! I just wanted to put this post up to bring some visibility to and give an update on a project that @IkerParity mentioned in this post: NoS.
NoS stands for node + Sidecar and was built with exchanges and custodians in mind (the car enthusiasts will also know that Nos makes you go faster…foreshadowing).
Currently, Polkadot’s unique Relay chain<>parachain architecture makes for a larger integration surface area, particularly for exchanges. The transition to using Asset-Hub-X (see The Naming of Things (viz. Statemint) and Statemint to Asset Hub for more details) will help address this. However, we still wanted to make it as quick and easy as possible for service providers to spin up the infrastructure they need to support any Relay chain<>parachin combination, and that’s what NoS does.
In short, NoS is a configurable script that, when run, will set up Docker containers and install the nodes and tooling you configured it to. After that updating your nodes or tooling is as simple as making changes to the config file and rerunning the script.
Here is what a basic setup would look like after running NoS and configuring it to set up a Relay Chain and one parachain:
Note that the Relay Chain and parachain nodes can live in one container as a collator, but Sidecar can only be connected to one chain at a time, so a separate container is required for each instance of Sidecar.
Currently, we support:
Relaychains
Polkadot
Kusama
Westend
Rococo
Parachains
Statemint (being renamed to Asset-Hub-Polkadot)
Statemine (being renamed to Asset-Hub-Kusama)
Westmint (being renamed to Asset-Hub-Westend)
Collectives Polkadot
This is just a start though, and we can add more parachains and features as demand arises. That is the phase we are at; NoS is ready to be tested in the wild so we are currently looking for teams to try it out and provide feedback. If you would like to try it out yourself, you should find everything you need in the repository. If you have any troubles, please open an issue on the repository. Lastly, if you want to see a little of NoS being used, you can check out the latest Polkadot Deep Dive where @Imod7 and I give a presentation on Sidecar, txWrapper as well as NoS.