nDAX

nDAX is an open-source cloud-native multi-service platform for building a digital assets exchange.

Getting started with nDAX

1. Get a VM

Minimum VM requirements for nDAX:

• 8GB of RAM (12GB recommended)
• 4 cores vCPU (6 cores recommended)
• 300GB disk space (SSD recommended)

A VM from any cloud provider like DigitalOcean, Vultr, GCP, AWS as well as any dedicated server with Ubuntu, Debian or Centos would work

For starter we strongly advice to use Vultr.

2. Prepare the VM

2.1 Create Unix user

SSH using root user, then create new user for the application

useradd -g users -s `which bash` -m app

2.2 Install Docker and docker compose

We highly recommend using docker and compose from docker.com install guide instead of the system provided package, which would most likely be deprecated.

Docker follow instruction here: docker Docker compose follow steps: docker compose

2.3 Install ruby in user app

2.3.1 Change user using

su - app

2.3.2 Clone nDAX

git clone https://github.com/nexbitio/ndax.git

2.3.3 Install RVM

gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3 7D2BAF1CF37B13E2069D6956105BD0E739499BDB
curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
cd ndax
rvm install .

3. Bundle install dependencies

bundle install
rake -T # To see if ruby and lib works

Using rake -T you can see all available commands, and can create new ones in lib/tasks

4. Run everything

4.1 Configure your domain

If using a VM you can point your domain name to the VM ip address before this stage. Recommended if you enabled SSL, for local development edit the /etc/hosts

Insert in file /etc/hosts

0.0.0.0 www.app.local

4.2 Render all config files

Simply run rake render:config

4.3 Set up Vault

[Note: Everything is persisted on the local file-system, thus API keys and 2FA tokens are preserved between restarts. However, Vault needs to be unsealed after every stop/restart.]

To set up Vault, go through the following steps:

• docker-compose up -d vault
• docker-compose exec vault sh
• vault operator init
• Save the output to a file in a secure place
• Unlock Vault with three different unlock keys - vault operator unseal *unseal_key*
• vault login *root_token*
• vault secrets enable totp
• vault secrets enable transit
• vault secrets disable secret
• vault secrets enable -path=secret -version=1 kv

Add the Vault root token to config/app.yml, render the configs and start the app services. Afterwards, Vault should be fully configured and ready to work with Peatio and Barong.

4.4 Bring everything up

rake service:all

You can login on www.app.local with the following default users from seeds.yaml

Seeded users:
Email: admin@barong.io, password: 0lDHd9ufs9t@
Email: john@barong.io, password: Am8icnzEI3d!

Usage

Initial configuration

All the nDAX deployment files have their confguration stored in config/app.yml.

app.yml

The following table lists the configurable parameters of the config/app.yml configuration file and its default values.

Parameter	Description	Default
app.name	global application name	"nDAX"
app.domain	base domain name	app.local
subdomain	subdomain	www
render_protect	enable read-only mode for rendered files	false
csrfEnabled	enable CSRF protection on Barong	false
ssl.enabled	enable SSL certificate generation	false
ssl.email	email address used for SSL certificate issuing	"support@example.com"
images	Docker image tags per component
vendor.frontend	optional Git URL for a development frontend repo	git@bitbucket.com:nexbitio/npro.git
vault.token	Vault authentication token	changeme
database.host	database host name	db
database.port	database port	3306
database.user	database username	root
database.password	database root password	changeme
storage.provider	object storage provider	"Google"
storage.bucketname	storage bucket name	"ndax-barong-docs-bucket"
storage.endpoint	S3-compatible storage API endpoint	"https://fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com"
storage.region	storage region	"fra1"
storage.signatureVersion	S3-compatible storage API signature version(2 or 4)	"fra1"
storage.secretkey, storage.accesskey	storage access keys	"changeme"
twilio	Twilio SMS provider configs
gaTrackerKey	Google Analytics tracker key inserted into the frontend app
smtp	SMTP configs used for sending platform emails
captcha	captcha configuration(Recaptcha or Geetest)
wallets	configs for wallets seeded during the initial deployment of Peatio
parity	Parity cryptonode configuration
bitcoind	Bitcoind cryptonode configuration
litecoind	Litecoind cryptonode configuration
terraform.credentials	local path to a GCP service account JSON key	"~/safe/ndax.json"
terraform.project	GCP project name	"example-ndax"

utils.yml

The following table lists configurable parameters of the config/utils.yml file:

Parameter	Description	Default
images	Docker image tags per component
superset	Superset BI tool configs
arke	Arke liquidity bot configs

Once you're done with the configuration, render the files using rake render:config. You can easily apply your changes at any time by running this command.

Note: be sure to append all the subdomains based on app.domain to your
/etc/hosts file if you're running nDAX locally

Bringing up the stack

The nDAX stack can be brought up using two ways:

1. Bootstrap all the components at once using rake service:all[start]
2. Start every component one-by-one using rake service:*component*[start]

The components included in the stack are:

• proxy - Traefik, a robust cloud-native edge router/reverse proxy written in Go
• backend - Vault, MySQL, Redis and RabbitMQ grouped together
• cryptonodes - cryptocurrency nodes such as parity [Optional]
• daemons - Peatio and Ranger daemons [Optional]
• setup - setup hooks for Peatio and Barong to run before the application starts (DB migration etc.)
• app - Peatio, Barong and the Ambassador API gateway
• frontend - the frontend application located at vendor/frontend
• tower - the Tower admin panel application located at vendor/tower
• monitoring - cAdvisor and Node Exporter monitoring tools [Optional]

For example, to start the backend services, you'll simply need to run rake service:backend[start]

Note: all the components marked as [Optional] need to be installed using
rake service:*component*[start] explicitly

Go ahead and try your own nDAX exchange deployment!

Stopping and restarting components

Any component from the stack can be easily stopped or restarted using rake service:*component*[stop] and rake service:*component*[restart].

For example, rake service:frontend[stop] would stop the frontend application container and rake service:proxy[restart] would completely restart the reverse proxy container.

Managing component deployments

Each component has a config file (ex. config/frontend/tower.js) and a compose file (ex. compose/frontend.yaml).

All config files are mounted into respective component container, except from config/app.yml - this file contains all the neccessary configuration of ndax deployment

Compose files contain component images, environment configuration etc.

These files get rendered from their respective templates that are located under templates directory.

How to update component image?

Modify config/app.yml with correct image and run rake service:all This will rerender all the files from templates directory and restart all the running services.

Alternitavely you can update the following files:

• config/app.yml
• templates/compose/*component*.yml
• compose/*component*.yml And run rake service:component[start]

How to update component config?

Modify config/*component*/*config* and run rake service:component[start], if you want the changes to be persistent, you also need to update templates/config/*components*/*config*

Render compose file

# Delete all generated files
git clean -fdx

# Re-generate config from config/app.yml values
rake render:config

# Restart the container you need to reload config
docker-compose up frontend -Vd

Clone the vendors and start

source ./bin/set-env.sh
rake vendor:clone
docker-compose -f compose/vendor.yaml up -d

Terraform Infrastructure as Code Provisioning

You can easily deploy nDAX from scratch on Google Cloud Platform using Terraform!

To do this, just follow these simple steps:

• Fill app.yml with correct values
• Run rake terraform:apply
• Access your VM from the GCP Cloud Console

To destroy the provisioned infrastructure, just run rake terraform:destroy

Installer tool

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nexbitio/ndax/master/bin/install)"

Happy trading with nDAX!

If you have any comments, feedback and suggestions, we are happy to hear from you here at GitHub or at nexbitio.com