Running a Development Node

How to run Orbinum on your own machine: a single dev node, or a small local network with two validators.

Before you start

Complete Installation first. This page covers local development only — to join the testnet, see Becoming a Validator or Public RPC Node.

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What development mode gives you

	Development (--dev)	Local network (--chain local)
Consensus	Aura timed blocks; instant seal with --sealing instant	Aura between the nodes you start
Data	Temporary with --tmp	Temporary or persistent
Accounts	Alice, Bob, Charlie, Dave, Eve and Ferdie, pre-funded	Same
EVM chain ID	42	42

Neither talks to the testnet. Both give you a chain you fully control.

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Development Mode

The examples use $ORB for the image. Export it once:

export ORB=ghcr.io/orbinum/node:testnet-latest

Basic Development Node

docker run --rm $ORB --dev --tmp

--tmp clears the chain state on every start. Add --sealing instant for a block per transaction instead of timed blocks.

Pre-funded Development Accounts

--dev funds the standard Substrate development accounts — Alice, Bob, Charlie, Dave, Eve and Ferdie. Alice is:

5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY

They derive from well-known seeds (//Alice, //Bob, …), so any wallet or the subkey tool reproduces them:

docker run --rm $ORB key inspect //Bob

Development seeds are public

Everyone knows these keys. Never use them on testnet or mainnet, and never send anything of value to one.

With Persistent Data

To keep state between restarts, mount a host directory (or a named volume):

docker run --rm -v "$PWD/data:/data" $ORB \
    --dev --base-path /data

Enable External RPC Access

To connect from Polkadot.js Apps or external wallets, publish the RPC port:

docker run --rm -p 9944:9944 $ORB \
    --dev --tmp \
    --rpc-cors all \
    --rpc-external

Development Only

-p 9944:9944 with --rpc-external exposes the full RPC, including unsafe methods — the binary always enables them (see Node Flags). Local development only.

With Ethereum RPC APIs

For EVM development (MetaMask, Hardhat, etc.):

docker run --rm -p 9944:9944 $ORB \
    --dev --tmp \
    --rpc-cors all \
    --rpc-external \
    --ethapi=debug,trace,txpool

Available endpoints:

• Substrate RPC: ws://127.0.0.1:9944
• Ethereum RPC: http://127.0.0.1:9944 (JSON-RPC compatible)

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Local Multi-Node Testnet

To simulate a small network locally with the well-known --alice / --bob keys, run two containers on a shared Docker network:

docker network create orbinum-local

Node 1 (Alice — bootnode):

docker run --rm --name alice --network orbinum-local \
    -p 9944:9944 $ORB \
    --chain local --alice --tmp \
    --port 30333 --rpc-port 9944

Copy the Local node identity from Alice's logs (format 12D3KooW...).

Node 2 (Bob):

docker run --rm --name bob --network orbinum-local \
    -p 9945:9944 $ORB \
    --chain local --bob --tmp \
    --port 30333 --rpc-port 9944 \
    --bootnodes /dns/alice/tcp/30333/p2p/<ALICE_PEER_ID>

Replace <ALICE_PEER_ID> with the identity from Alice's logs. Both nodes discover each other over the orbinum-local network and finalize blocks together.

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Flags, logging and custom chain specs: Node Flags.