Run a noVM Messenger Rollup on Astria

Rollups on Astria are virtual machine (VM) agnostic, which means that they can function without relying on a VM — a concept we refer to as a noVM rollup.

Using Astria's Execution API, developers can build rollups tailored to any application type that operates on transactions, messages, and blocks.

The following tutorial demonstrates running a simplified noVM messenger rollup app which users can interact with using a cli to submit messages and access message history from the rollup.

View the code for the noVM-messenger here.

Prerequisites

You will need the following installed to complete the tutorial:

• Cargo and Rust
• astria-go cli
• just

Clone the noVM-messenger Rollup Repo

SSH

git clone git@github.com:astriaorg/noVM-messenger.git
cd noVM-messenger
cargo build

HTTPS

git clone https://github.com/astriaorg/noVM-messenger.git
cd noVM-messenger
cargo build

Configure the astria-go cli

Create a new instance with the cli:

astria-go dev init --instance novm

Go to ~/.astria/ and update the tui-config.toml to have the following:

This step is optional but will make viewing the running rollup much easier in the TUI.

auto_scroll = true
wrap_lines = false
borderless = false
override_instance_name = 'novm'
cometbft_starts_minimized = false
conductor_starts_minimized = false
composer_starts_minimized = false
sequencer_starts_minimized = true
generic_starts_minimized = false
generic_start_position = 'after'
highlight_color = 'blue'
border_color = 'gray'

Navigate to ~/.astria/novm/networks-config.toml. Scroll through the file to find the following heading:

[networks.local.services]

Continue scrolling through that section until you pass the last service heading within the local services:

[networks.local.services.sequencer]

Add the following at the end of that section. Make sure that the local_path is set to point at the target dir within the example transfer rollup directory. This dir should already be present in the repo once you have run cargo build.

If you are in the noVM-messenger directory, you can get this full path by running:

echo "$(pwd)/target/debug/chat-rollup"

[networks.local.services.rollup]
name = 'rollup'
version = 'v0.1.0'
download_url = ''
local_path = '<absolute path to>/noVM-messenger/target/debug/chat-rollup'
args = []

Then add a new rollup genesis file in the novm/config/ directory at $HOME/.astria/novm/config/rollup_genesis.json:

{
    "rollup_name": "chat-rollup",
    "accounts": [
        {
            "address": {
                "bech32m": "astria1rsxyjrcm255ds9euthjx6yc3vrjt9sxrm9cfgm"
            },
            "balance": {
                "lo": 100000000000000000
            }
        }
    ],
    "sequencer_genesis_block_height": 2,
    "celestia_genesis_block_height": 2,
    "celestia_block_variance": 100,
    "authority_sudo_address": {
        "bech32m": "astria1rsxyjrcm255ds9euthjx6yc3vrjt9sxrm9cfgm"
    }
}

Then open ~/.astria/novm/config/base-config.toml and add the configuration for the rollup.

Add the following to the end of the file:

metrics_http_listener_addr = 'http://127.0.0.1:50053'
log = 'debug'
composer_addr = 'http://127.0.0.1:50052'
db_filepath = '<absolute path of your home dir>/.astria/novm/data/rollup_data'
genesis_filepath = '<absolute path of your home dir>/.astria/novm/config/rollup_genesis.json'
execution_grpc_addr = '0.0.0.0:50051'
force_stdout = 'true'
pretty_print = 'true'
no_otel = 'true'
no_metrics = 'true'

Then update the db_filepath and genesis_filepath. You can get both of these paths by running the following:

echo "db_filepath = '$HOME/.astria/novm/data/rollup_data'"
echo "genesis_filepath = '$HOME/.astria/novm/config/rollup_genesis.json'"

Then update the astria_composer_grpc_addr already present in the base-config.toml to match the composer_addr address you just added above.

astria_composer_grpc_addr = '127.0.0.1:50052'

Lastly, update the astria_composer_rollups variable to enable generic submissions to the Composer:

astria_composer_rollups = ''

Run the rollup

astria-go dev run --instance novm --network local

Install the rollup-cli

In the noVM-messenger repo run the following:

just install-cli

Export some environment variables to make the following commands easier:

export PRIV_KEY="2bd806c97f0e00af1a1fc3328fa763a9269723c8db8fac4f93af71db186d6e90"
export ROLLUP_URL="http://localhost:3030"
export ALICE_ADDRESS="astria1rsxyjrcm255ds9euthjx6yc3vrjt9sxrm9cfgm"
export BOB_ADDRESS="astria1yf56efahcq786pe5t7paknat40g6q4tsvqtql2"

Submit New Messages

Send a transfer on the rollup:

rollup-cli submit transfer --amount 1 --private-key $PRIV_KEY --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL $BOB_ADDRESS

Submit new text to the rollup:

rollup-cli submit text --private-key $PRIV_KEY --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL "a new message" "username"

TIP

You may see an ERROR astria_composer::metrics: error in the Composer when submitting new messages. This results from setting astria_composer_rollups = '' to an empty value and can be ignored when testing the rollup.

Query the Rollup

To view recent messages that have been submitted to the rollup you can use:

rollup-cli query texts --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL

See the balance of an account:

rollup-cli query balance --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL $BOB_ADDRESS
rollup-cli query balance --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL $ALICE_ADDRESS

See the nonce of an account:

rollup-cli query nonce --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL $BOB_ADDRESS
rollup-cli query nonce --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL $ALICE_ADDRESS

Deposit From Sequencer

Sending deposits requires the astria-cli:

ARM Mac

curl -L https://github.com/astriaorg/astria/releases/download/cli-v0.5.1/astria-cli-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz > astria-cli.tar.gz
tar -xvzf astria-cli.tar.gz
mv astria-cli /usr/local/bin/

X86_64 Mac

curl -L https://github.com/astriaorg/astria/releases/download/cli-v0.5.1/astria-cli-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz > astria-cli.tar.gz
tar -xvzf astria-cli.tar.gz
mv astria-cli /usr/local/bin/

x86_64 Linux

curl -L https://github.com/astriaorg/astria/releases/download/cli-v0.5.1/astria-cli-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz > astria-cli.tar.gz
tar -xvzf astria-cli.tar.gz
mv astria-cli /usr/local/bin/

From Source

cargo install astria-cli --git=https://github.com/astriaorg/astria --tag=cli-v0.5.1 --locked

To deposit from the Astria Sequencer to the noVM-messenger rollup you need to fund an account on the sequencer with at least 48 utia to cover the InitBridgeAccount action cost, then convert that account to a bridge account:

export PRIV_KEY="2bd806c97f0e00af1a1fc3328fa763a9269723c8db8fac4f93af71db186d6e90"
export SEQUENCER_URL="http://127.0.0.1:26657"
export BRIDGE_ADDRESS="astria1f6yydwp23ucl6kfxt2gqt9vufgpsl3zvz5hwxk"
export BRIDGE_PRIV_KEY="0e951afdcbefc420fe6f71b82b0c28c11eb6ee5d95be0886ce9dbf6fa512debc"
export BOB_ADDRESS="astria1yf56efahcq786pe5t7paknat40g6q4tsvqtql2"

# Fund the account
astria-cli sequencer transfer --amount 50 \
    --private-key $PRIV_KEY \
    --sequencer.chain-id sequencer-test-chain-0 \
    --sequencer-url $SEQUENCER_URL \
    --fee-asset=ntia \
    --asset=ntia \
    $BRIDGE_ADDRESS

sleep 5

astria-cli sequencer balance get --sequencer-url $SEQUENCER_URL $BRIDGE_ADDRESS

# Convert to a bridge account
astria-cli sequencer init-bridge-account --private-key $BRIDGE_PRIV_KEY --sequencer-url $SEQUENCER_URL \
    --sequencer.chain-id sequencer-test-chain-0 \
    --rollup-name astria-chat \
    --asset ntia \
    --fee-asset ntia

Deposit ntia from the sequencer to the rollup:

astria-cli sequencer bridge-lock $BRIDGE_ADDRESS \
    --amount 1 \
    --destination-chain-address $BOB_ADDRESS \
    --private-key $PRIV_KEY  \
    --sequencer.chain-id sequencer-test-chain-0 \
    --sequencer-url $SEQUENCER_URL \
    --fee-asset=ntia \
    --asset=ntia

The native asset on the sequencer is ntia, and the native asset on the noVM-messenger is nria. You can check the balance of both assets on the rollup as follows:

rollup-cli query balance --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL --asset ntia $BOB_ADDRESS
rollup-cli query balance --rollup-url $ROLLUP_URL --asset nria $BOB_ADDRESS