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The Genesis Block

The Casper node software creates a genesis block from the following input files:

  • chainspec.toml
  • accounts.toml

chainspec.toml

A version of the chainspec is downloaded by the pull_casper_node_version.sh script installed with the casper-node-launcher debian package. This script pulls the chainspec.toml file from the appropriate path defined in the network config file used (casper.conf for MainNet and casper-test.conf for TestNet).

The production version of the file from which this is based on can be found at casper-node/resources/production/chainspec.toml in the code base. To create a custom network, this file can be updated as desired. Any changes to this file will result in a different genesis hash. Refer to this page for detailed documentation on each of the variables in the file.

accounts.toml

This file contains the genesis validator set information, starting accounts and associated balances and bond amounts.

If an account is not bonded at genesis, specify a 0 for the bond amount.

Similar to the chainspec.toml, this is pulled from the appropriate path defined in the network config file used.