Solana

Zero-to-Solana First Metaplex

Going from Zero to Solana; running your first metaplex upload with no pre-requisites

  • Lightcycle

    Crypto quant

    More posts by Lightcycle.

Lightcycle

•7 min read

A. Introduction

No pre-requisites required. You do not have to have read the first post in the series to run this, because we’ll put the setup steps in this document.

Goal for this is to be copy-paste in-order from a fresh system mint an NFT using metaplex on Solana devnet, all on a single page with numbered steps (so you can get help debugging)

B. Set up a VM using Multipass

The only way to get away with the OS-agnostic approach is to run everything on a a Ubuntu 20.04 and access via SSH command-line and tunneling.

We’ll use multipass, as this is cross-platform. Feel free to use VirtualBox, Parallels, or a cloud VM from AWS to load up the Ubuntu system.

On your host system open up a terminal (or Powershell):

After installation, in your terminal, run:

multipass launch -n zerotosolana -m 8G -d 100G
  • This will create an Ubuntu 20.04 VM named zerotosolana with 8GB of ram and 100GB of (virtual) disk space. Feel free to change these

Get into your shell like so:

multipass shell zerotosolana
  • Note: This uses the autogenerated SSH keys in your multipass setup. You may override these and simply use ssh with a cloud-init.yaml file, which is out of scope for this doc

Install npm and yarn

We will upgrade the system node to install yarn, and then we will install nvm which lets us switch node versions for different projects

C1. Install system npm and yarn in Ubuntu VM

  1. Update apt database 
    sudo apt update
  2. Add apt source list 
    curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo bash -
  3. Install nodejs and npm 
    sudo apt -y install nodejs npm
  4. Install yarn 
    sudo npm install --global yarn

C2. Install nvm to manage node versions

  1. Install nvm 
    sudo apt install -y curl 
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | bash
  2. Source profile 
    source ~/.profile
  3. install specific version of node with nvm 
    nvm install 14.17.6
  4. use specific version of node with nvm 
    nvm use 14.17.6
  5. Confirm you are using: 
    node -v
    • It should say something like v14.17.6

D. Install metaplex

  1. Clone metaplex 
    git clone https://github.com/metaplex-foundation/metaplex.git gh_metaplex-foundation_metaplex
  2. Get into the cli directory 
    cd gh_metaplex-foundation_metaplex/js/packages/cli
  3. (optional) if you want to use the same version as this guide: 
    git checkout fda50663d76c93295e05962926c4c17f400397d8 # 2021 Sep 15 has the --no-bytecode fix
    • metaplex is going through massive daily updates, so recommend you use the same version
  4. Build and install using the linux bytecode fix: 
    yarn install
yarn build
yarn run package:linuxb
  5. Add path to profile 
    echo export PATH=\"$(pwd)/bin/linux/:\$PATH\" >> ~/.profile
  6. Source to get metaplex 
    source ~/.profile
  7. Check metaplex to see if it works: 
    metaplex --version
    • It should look something like this:
    > metaplex --version
0.0.1

E. Solana

Note: we will use devnet and keygen switches explicitly. You may create a config file later to override mainnet defaults.

  1. Install solana, around 240MB 
    sh -c "$(curl -sSfL https://release.solana.com/v1.7.11/install)"
    • It will update the PATH in your .profile file to this: 
      export PATH="/home/ubuntu/.local/share/solana/install/active_release/bin:$PATH"
  2. Get access to solana 
    source ~/.profile
  3. Confirm access to solana binary: 
    solana --version
    • You will see solana-cli 1.7.11 (src:bdb77b0c; feat:1140394761)
  4. Generate keypair 
    solana-keygen new --outfile ~/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json
    • It will look something like:
    Generating a new keypair

For added security, enter a BIP39 passphrase

NOTE! This passphrase improves security of the recovery seed phrase NOT the
keypair file itself, which is stored as insecure plain text

BIP39 Passphrase (empty for none): 

Wrote new keypair to /home/ubuntu/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json
==========================================================================
pubkey: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
==========================================================================
Save this seed phrase and your BIP39 passphrase to recover your new keypair:
fake seed lightcycle research is the best fake seed fake seed fake seed
==========================================================================
  5. Request 10 SOL airdrop on devnet 
    solana --url devnet --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json airdrop 10
  6. Confirm balance 
    solana --url devnet --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json balance

F. Generate Assets

We will make two example NFTs for uploading

  1. Install python3 
    sudo apt install -y python3
  2. Clone the lightcycle nft generator project: 
    git clone https://github.com/lightcycleresearch/lightcycle-nft-generator.git gh_lightcycleresearch_lightcycle-nft-generator
  3. Change into directory 
    cd gh_lightcycleresearch_lightcycle-nft-generator
  4. Create config.ini 
    cp config.ini.example config.ini
  5. Get your solana pubkey and copy it to your clipboard for the next step: 
    solana-keygen pubkey ~/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json
  6. Edit config.ini and change REPLACEME to your pubkey, save and close the file 
    vim config.ini
  7. Initialize project 
    python3 nftgen.py --project example --config config.ini --initialize
  8. Generate metadata 
    python3 nftgen.py --project example --config config.ini --generate-metadata
  9. Generate assets, which moves the images and metadata into one folder 
    python3 nftgen.py --project example --config config.ini --generate-assets
  10. Confirm you have the correct assets: 
    ls projects/example/assets/
    • It will look like: 0.json 0.png 1.json 1.png
  11. Get into the project directory to prepare for the next step 
    cd projects/example

G. Metaplex

We will upload, verify, create a candy machine, and mint a token with metaplex. We must create the candy machine before minting

  1. Ensure you are in the correct directory with the assets folder: 
    pwd
    • It should look something like: /home/ubuntu/gh_lightcycleresearch_lightcycle-nft-generator/projects/example
  2. Check you have the assets folder available: 
    ls
    • It should look like: assets/ images/ metadata/
  3. Confirm you have the correct assets: 
    ls projects/example/assets/
    • It will look like: 0.json 0.png 1.json 1.png
  4. Run metaplex upload: 
    metaplex upload ./assets --env devnet --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json
    • If it fails, run it again. Sometimes it takes a few tries
    • It will look something like: 
      Processing file: 0
...
...
Processing file: 1
Started awaiting confirmation for xxx
REST null result for xxx null
Resolved via websocket { err: null }
Returning status { err: null, slot: 81091320, confirmations: 0 }
Latency xxx 1.9210000038146973
transaction for arweave payment: {
txid: 'xxx',
slot: 81091320
}
File uploaded: https://arweave.net/xxx
Writing indices  0 - 1
Done
  5. Verify the upload: 
    metaplex verify --env devnet --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json
    • It will look something like: 
      Looking at key  0
Name lightcycle #0 with https://arweave.net/xxx checked out
Looking at key  1
Name lightcycle #1 with https://arweave.net/xxx checked out
  6. Create candy machine, so we can mint later: 
    metaplex create_candy_machine --env devnet --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json
    • It will look something like: 
      wallet public key: xxx
create_candy_machine finished. candy machine pubkey: xxx
  7. Mint a token for testing 
    metaplex mint_one_token --env devnet --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet-lightcycle.json
    • It will look something like:
    wallet public key: xxx  
Done xxx

Resources and References

You may read more for details:

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