Pigeon

A Golang cross-chain message relayer system for Paloma validators to deliver messages to any blockchain.

For Crosschain software engineers that want simultaneous control of mulitiple smart contracts, on any blockchain, Paloma is decentralized and consensus-driven message delivery, fast state awareness, low cost state computation, and powerful attestation system that enables scaleable, crosschain, smart contract execution with any data source.

Table of Contents

• Talk To Us
• Releases
• Active Networks
• Issues
• Install

Talk to us

We have active, helpful communities on Twitter and Telegram.

• Twitter
• Telegram
• Discord
• Forum

Releases

See Release procedure for more information about the release model.

Active Networks

• Paloma Testnest paloma-testnet-15 (Jan 20, 2023)
• Paloma Mainnet messenger (Feb 8, 2023)
• Ethereum Mainnet (relay)
• Binance Smart Chain Mainnet (relay)
• Polygon Mainnet (relay)

ISSUES

This repo does not accept issues. Please use https://github.com/palomachain/paloma/issues to submit issues and add pigeon label!

Install

If you are upgrading from a prior tesntet confirm that you added the health-check-port: 5757 to your pigeon yaml configuration file and upgrade the paloma chain-id field to paloma-testnet-15 for Testnet or messenger for Mainnet (see example below).

Note:

If you're joining while testnet didn't boot up yet you may see a log line saying not staking. waiting. That's OK. If you see this after the chains starts producing blocks, then it means that your validator has been jailed.

Note:

Some have seen errors with GLIBC version differences with the downloaded binaries. This is caused by a difference in the libraries of the host that built the binary and the host running the binary.

If you experience these errors, please pull down the code and build it, rather than downloading the prebuilt binary

To get the latest prebuilt pigeon binary:

wget -O - https://github.com/palomachain/pigeon/releases/download/v1.5.0/pigeon_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz  | \
  sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xvzf - pigeon
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/pigeon

mkdir ~/.pigeon

To build pigeon using latest

git clone https://github.com/palomachain/pigeon.git
cd pigeon
git checkout v1.5.0
make build
sudo mv ./build/pigeon /usr/local/bin/pigeon

mkdir ~/.pigeon

If you're upgrading to the most recent version, you will need to stop pigeond before removing the old binary and copying the new binary into place.

Set up your EVM Keys. Don't forget your passwords!

Ethereum Mainnet (eth-main)

pigeon evm keys generate-new ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/eth-main

Binance Smart Chain Mainnet (bnb-main)

pigeon evm keys generate-new ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/bnb-main

Polygon Mainnet (matic-main)

pigeon evm keys generate-new ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/matic-main

Optimism Mainnet (op-main)

pigeon evm keys generate-new ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/op-main

Kava Mainnet (kava-main)

pigeon evm keys generate-new ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/kava-main

or import existing you existing Ethereum evm private keys

Ethereum Mainnet (eth-main)

pigeon evm keys import ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/eth-main

Binance Smart Chain Mainnet (bnb-main)

pigeon evm keys import ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/bnb-main

Polygon Mainnet (matic-main)

pigeon evm keys import ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/matic-main

Optimism Mainnet (op-main)

pigeon evm keys import ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/op-main

Kava Mainnet (kava-main)

pigeon evm keys import ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/kava-main

Config setup

IMPORTANT VALIDATOR NOTE: gas-adjustment is important in your pigeon settings. The gas adjustment values in the example below are set to ensure that your relay is able to increase gas required during periods of high congestion on the target chain. We propose that for tx-type: 2, gas-adjustment is set to 2 except for bnb-main chain. However, given that Paloma assigns messages based on pigeon performance, make sure your gas adjustment for each target chain maximizes your message delivery, while minimizing your relay costs.

Make sure your Paloma Cosmos-SDK keys are stored and available on your environment.

palomad keys add "$VALIDATOR" --recover

Set the VALIDATOR env variable

export VALIDATOR="$(palomad keys list --list-names | head -n1)"

Create configuration file here ~/.pigeon/config.yaml

loop-timeout: 5s
health-check-port: 5757

paloma:
  chain-id: paloma-testnet-15
  call-timeout: 20s
  keyring-dir: ~/.paloma
  keyring-pass-env-name: PALOMA_KEYRING_PASS
  keyring-type: os
  signing-key: ${VALIDATOR}
  base-rpc-url: http://localhost:26657
  gas-adjustment: 1.5
  gas-prices: 0.001ugrain
  account-prefix: paloma

evm:
  eth-main:
    chain-id: 1
    base-rpc-url: ${ETH_RPC_URL}
    keyring-pass-env-name: ETH_PASSWORD
    signing-key: ${ETH_SIGNING_KEY}
    keyring-dir: ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/eth-main
    gas-adjustment: 2
    tx-type: 2

  bnb-main:
    chain-id: 56
    base-rpc-url: ${BNB_RPC_URL}
    keyring-pass-env-name: BNB_PASSWORD
    signing-key: ${BNB_SIGNING_KEY}
    keyring-dir: ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/bnb-main
    gas-adjustment: 1
    tx-type: 0

  matic-main:
    chain-id: 137
    base-rpc-url: ${MATIC_RPC_URL}
    keyring-pass-env-name: MATIC_PASSWORD
    signing-key: ${MATIC_SIGNING_KEY}
    keyring-dir: ~/.pigeon/keys/evm/matic-main
    gas-adjustment: 2
    tx-type: 2
  
  op-main:
    chain-id: 10
    base-rpc-url: ${OP_RPC_URL}
    keyring-pass-env-name: OP_PASSWORD
    signing-key: ${OP_SIGNING_KEY}
    keyring-dir: /root/.pigeon/keys/evm/op-main
    gas-adjustment: 2
    tx-type: 2

  kava-main:
    chain-id: 2222
    base-rpc-url: ${KAVA_RPC_URL}
    keyring-pass-env-name: KAVA_PASSWORD
    signing-key: ${KAVA_SIGNING_KEY}
    keyring-dir: /root/.pigeon/keys/evm/kava-main
    gas-adjustment: 2
    tx-type: 2

Start pigeon

First pigeon will need some keys:

cat <<EOT >~/.pigeon/env.sh
PALOMA_KEYRING_PASS=<your Paloma key password>
ETH_RPC_URL=<Your Ethereum mainnet RPC URL>
ETH_PASSWORD=<Your ETH Key Password>
ETH_SIGNING_KEY=<Your ETH SIGNING KEY>
BNB_RPC_URL=<Your Binance mainnet RPC URL>
BNB_PASSWORD=<Your BNB Key Password>
BNB_SIGNING_KEY=<Your BNB SIGNING KEY>
MATIC_RPC_URL=<Your Binance mainnet RPC URL>
MATIC_PASSWORD=<Your BNB Key Password>
MATIC_SIGNING_KEY=<Your BNB SIGNING KEY>
VALIDATOR=<VALIDATOR NAME>
EOT

Then we can run pigeon with:

source ~/.pigeon/env.sh
pigeon start

Using systemd

Make sure you have configured .pigeon/env.sh as above. Then create a systemctl configuration:

cat <<EOT >/etc/systemd/system/pigeond.service
[Unit]
Description=Pigeon daemon
After=network-online.target
ConditionPathExists=/usr/local/bin/pigeon

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
User=${USER}
WorkingDirectory=~
EnvironmentFile=${HOME}/.pigeon/env.sh
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/pigeon start
ExecReload=

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOT

Then start our pigeon!

service pigeond start

# Check that it's running successfully:
service pigeond status
# Or watch the logs:
journalctl -u pigeond.service -f -n 100

Definitions and Descriptions of Pigeons Variables

• for paloma key:
  • keyring-dir
    • right now it's not really super important where this points. The important things for the future is that pigeon needs to send transactions to Paloma using it's validator (operator) key!
    • it's best to leave it as is
  • keyring-pass-env-name
    • this one is super important!
    • it is the name of the ENV variable where password to unlock the keyring is stored!
    • you are not writing password here!! You are writing the ENV variable's name where the password is stored.
    • you should obviously use a bit more advanced method than shown here, but here is the example:
      • if the keyring-pass-env-name is set to MY_SUPER_SECRET_PASS then you should provide ENV variable MY_SUPER_SECRET_PASS and store the password there
      • e.g. MY_SUPER_SECRET_PASS=abcd pigeon start
  • keyring-type
    • it should be the same as it's defined for paloma's client. Look under the ~/.paloma/config/client.toml
  • signing-key
    • right now it's again not important which key we are using. It can be any key that has enough balance to submit TXs to Paloma. It's best to use the same key that's set up for the validator.
  • gas-adustment:
    • gas multiplier. The pigeon will estimate the gas to run a TX and then it will multiply it with gas-adjustment (if it's a positive number)
• for evm -> eth-main:
  • keyring-pass-env-name: as as above for paloma.
  • signing-key
    • address of the key from the keyring used to sign and send TXs to EVM network (one that you got when running pigeon evm keys generate-new from the install section)
  • keyring-dir:
    • a directory where keys to communicate with the EVM network is stored