🖱️Interacting with a network

Once a network is running, you can interact with it by clicking on its name. The status will show "Operational" on the networks page.

Once you scroll, you should be able to see a screen similar to the one below.

The services table offers a way to directly interact with the network. It shows the additional services Prometheus, Grafana, and a Block explorer. Additionally, it shows all the running nodes in the network.

When clicking on any of the additional services, it will open a new tab with direct access. The URL of the service can be found in the second column and is a public URL that can be shared with anyone.

Prometheus

Monitoring Your Network with Prometheus

Prometheus is a powerful monitoring and alerting toolkit that can be used to track the performance and health of your network.

Viewing Metrics

Prometheus collects and stores metrics data, which can be queried using the Prometheus query language (PromQL). The metrics are available at the /metrics endpoint of your nodes. Here's how you can start monitoring:

1. Access Prometheus Dashboard: Open your Prometheus web interface by navigating to the provided URL or clicking the Prometheus service name

2. Query Metrics: You can query various metrics related to your network's performance. Here are some example queries based on the available metrics from your nodes:

   • Consensus Metrics:

     • cometbft_consensus_height: Current block height.

     • cometbft_consensus_latest_block_height: Latest block height.

     • cometbft_consensus_num_txs: Number of transactions in the latest block.

     • cometbft_consensus_missing_validators: Number of missing validators.

     • cometbft_consensus_byzantine_validators: Number of Byzantine (malicious) validators.

   • Performance Metrics:

     • cometbft_consensus_block_size_bytes: Size of the latest block in bytes.

     • cometbft_consensus_full_prevote_delay: Delay in the full prevote step.

     • cometbft_consensus_proposal_create_count: Count of proposals created.

     • cometbft_consensus_proposal_receive_count: Count of proposals received.

3. Example Query: To get the current block height, you can enter the following query in the Prometheus query bar:

   cometbft_consensus_height

   This will return the current block height across all connected nodes.

For more detailed information on using Prometheus, refer to the Prometheus documentation.

Grafana

Monitoring Your Network with Grafana

Grafana is an open-source platform for monitoring and observability that integrates with Prometheus to provide rich, interactive dashboards.

1. Access Grafana Dashboard: Open your Grafana dashboard by navigating to the provided URL or clicking the Grafana service name

2. Explore the Dashboard: Grafana offers a variety of pre-configured metrics for all the nodes in the network. Here are some key metrics you can monitor:

   • Network Overview:

     • Block Height: Displays the current block height of the blockchain.

     • Total Transactions: Shows the total number of transactions processed.

     • Average Block Time: Average time taken to produce a block.

     • Bonded Tokens: The amount of tokens bonded by validators.

   • Validators:

     • Active Validators: Number of active validators.

     • Missing Validators: Number of validators not currently active.

     • Byzantine Validators: Number of validators that are considered malicious.

   • Performance Metrics:

     • Block Size: Average size of blocks in bytes.

     • Transaction Rates: Number of transactions per second.

     • Recheck Times: Number of times transactions are rechecked.

Customizing The Dashboard

You can customize the dashboard to fit your specific monitoring needs:

1. Add New Panels:

   • Click on the "Add panel" button to create new visualizations.

   • Select the metric you want to visualize and configure the graph settings.

2. Edit Existing Panels:

   • Hover over a panel and click on the panel title to access the edit menu.

   • Adjust the queries, visualization type, and display options as needed.

3. Save Dashboard:

   • After making changes, click the "Save dashboard" button to keep your modifications.

Setting Alerts

Grafana allows you to set up alerts based on your monitoring data:

1. Configure Alert Rules:

   • Open the panel where you want to add an alert.

   • Click on the "Alert" tab and configure the alert conditions.

   • Define the alert rules, evaluation interval, and notification channels.

2. Alert Notifications:

   • Set up notification channels in Grafana to receive alerts via email, Slack, or other messaging platforms.

   • Ensure your notification policies are configured to route alerts to the appropriate teams.

For more detailed information on using Grafana, refer to the Grafana documentation.

Block explorer

Using the Coreum Block Explorer

The Coreum Block Explorer is a powerful tool that allows users to view and interact with data from the Coreum blockchain.

Accessing the Block Explorer

1. Navigate to the Block Explorer: Open the Block Explorer by navigating to the provided URL or clicking the Block Explorer service name

Main Features

The Coreum Block Explorer provides several features to help you monitor and analyze blockchain data. Here are the main sections and what you can do with them:

1. Overview Dashboard

The home page provides a quick summary of the Coreum blockchain, including:

• Latest Block: The most recent block produced.

• Average Block Time: The average time it takes to produce a block.

• Active Validators: The number of active validators in the network.

• Tokenomics: A visual representation of the token distribution between bonded and unbonded tokens.

• Consensus Status: The current consensus step and round.

Please note that any coin price related metrics are currently not supported since they are not relevant for the testnet.

2. Blocks

The Blocks page lists recent blocks with the following details:

• Height: The block number.

• Proposer: The validator that proposed the block.

• Hash: The unique identifier for the block.

• Transactions (TXs): The number of transactions included in the block.

• Time: The time when the block was produced.

You can click on any block to view more information including the exact transactions that were included in the block.

3. Transactions

The Transactions page provides a detailed view of recent transactions, including:

• Transaction Hash: A unique identifier for each transaction.

• Type: The type of transaction (e.g., Send, Delegate).

• Sender: The address that initiated the transaction.

• Receiver: The address that received the transaction.

• Amount: The number of tokens transferred.

• Fee: The transaction fee paid.

• Result: The transaction status (e.g., Success).

• Timestamp: The time when the transaction was recorded.

4. Validators

The Validators page lists all validators and provides insights into their performance:

• Validator: The name or address of the validator.

• Voting Power: The amount of voting power the validator holds.

• Commission: The commission rate charged by the validator.

• Condition: The current health status of the validator (e.g., Good, Missing).

• Status: The current status of the validator (e.g., Active, Inactive).

5. Params

The Params page shows the current blockchain parameters, such as:

• Staking: Information on staking parameters like bond denomination, unbonding time, max validators, and minimum self-delegation.

• Slashing: Details on slashing conditions like downtime jail duration, signed block window, and slash fractions for different offenses.

• Minting: Parameters for minting new tokens, including blocks per year, goal bonded percentage, and inflation rates.

• Distribution: Information on community tax and withdrawal settings.

• Governance (Gov): Details on governance parameters like minimum deposit, deposit period, quorum, and voting thresholds.

• Fee Model: Parameters for transaction fees including max discount, max block gas, and gas price multipliers.

How to Use the Block Explorer

1. Search for Data: Use the search bar at the top of the page to look up specific validators, transaction hashes, block heights, addresses, or assets.

2. Navigate the Sections: Click on the relevant icons on the left-hand sidebar to access different sections such as Overview, Blocks, Transactions, Validators, Params, and Assets.

3. Interact with Data: Click on specific items (e.g., a block or transaction) to view more detailed information.

For further details and updates, refer to the official Coreum documentation.

The platform also allows to open a terminal to any of the nodes. Clicking on a node name will open a new tab with a full terminal. This allows you browse the nodes and run almost every command. Please note that currently file editing or download / upload is not possible. For example, you can use the cored binary to interact with the network.

To check the status of the node:

cored status

Or to check the balance of an address:

cored query bank balances <your address> --chain-id <you chain ID>

Additionally, the terminal allows you to access the logs which are streamed to a file named node.log in the / directory. You can view them using the "cat" command but please note that the command might fail once the file gets too large. In that case, please use the head or tail commands to get a shorter output.