Running a Node

Prerequisites

Before starting the daemon, you must have:

Initialized your node — blindference-node init completed
Attested with the ICL — blindference-node attest --mock (or interactive flow)

Without attestation, the daemon will exit with:

Error: No attestation found. Run `blindference-node attest` first.

Start the Daemon

# Interactive — prompts for keystore password
blindference-node run

# Non-interactive — uses environment variable
export BLF_KEY_PASSWORD=secure_password
blindference-node run

The daemon starts three concurrent loops:

Loop	Frequency	Purpose
ICL Heartbeat	Every 60s	Proves liveness to ICL (free REST call)
On-Chain Heartbeat	Every 10 days	Proves liveness to NodeRegistry (gas tx)
Attestation Watchdog	Every 10min	Auto-re-attests if certificate expires within 6h
Assignment Poller	Every 5s	Polls ICL for pending inference jobs

Daemon Lifecycle

Job Execution Flow

When an assignment is received, the worker executes:

Monitoring the Daemon

Console Output

The daemon logs to stdout with structured log lines:

[2026-05-18T10:25:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5] Daemon starting ...
[2026-05-18T10:25:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5]   Address : 0xdDef3Cf5A4d0A6404Bc084D74de3E2c0d6147dA5
[2026-05-18T10:25:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5]   Tier    : 0
[2026-05-18T10:25:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5]   Models  : qwen2.5-7b
[2026-05-18T10:25:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5]   Cert    : expires in 604663s
[2026-05-18T10:25:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5] Heartbeat sent to ICL
[2026-05-18T10:25:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5] No assignments for last 60s
[2026-05-18T10:35:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5] Received 1 assignment(s)
[2026-05-18T10:35:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5] Spawning leader job 0xabc123...
[2026-05-18T10:35:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5] Job 0xabc123: starting as leader
[2026-05-18T10:35:00] [INFO   ] [0xdDef3Cf5] Job 0xabc123: claimed

Log Levels

Level	Use
`DEBUG`	Full request/response bodies, CoFHE operations, model prompts
`INFO`	Heartbeats, job starts/completions, attestation events
`WARNING`	Claim failures, heartbeat failures, CoFHE errors (non-fatal)
`ERROR`	Job aborts, attestation failures, IPFS failures

Set log level via environment:

BLF_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG blindference-node run

Stopping the Daemon

Press Ctrl+C (SIGINT) or send SIGTERM:

kill -SIGTERM <pid>

The daemon handles shutdown gracefully:

Stops accepting new assignments
Waits for running jobs to complete (or timeout)
Sends final heartbeat
Exits

Running Multiple Nodes

You can run multiple nodes on the same machine (for testing) by using different config directories:

# Node 1
export BLF_CONFIG_PATH=/tmp/node1/config.json
blindference-node init
blindference-node run

# Node 2 (in another terminal)
export BLF_CONFIG_PATH=/tmp/node2/config.json
blindference-node init
blindference-node run

Each node needs a unique wallet and should use a unique ICL operator key.

Background Operation

Using systemd (Linux)

Create /etc/systemd/system/blindference-node.service:

[Unit]
Description=Blindference Node Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=blindference
Environment=BLF_KEY_PASSWORD=secure_password
Environment=BLF_LOG_LEVEL=INFO
WorkingDirectory=/home/blindference
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/blindference-node run
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable blindference-node
sudo systemctl start blindference-node
sudo systemctl status blindference-node

Using Docker

docker run -d \
  --name blindference-node \
  -e BLF_KEY_PASSWORD=secure_password \
  -e BLF_ICL_ENDPOINT=https://icl.blindference.xyz \
  -v /host/config:/root/.blindference \
  blindference-node

Using nohup / screen / tmux

# Simple background
nohup blindference-node run > node.log 2>&1 &

# Or with screen
screen -S blindference
blindference-node run
# Detach: Ctrl+A, D
# Reattach: screen -r blindference

Get Started

Compute

Build

API Reference

Resources

Running a Node

Running a Node

Prerequisites

Start the Daemon

Daemon Lifecycle

Job Execution Flow

Monitoring the Daemon

Console Output

Log Levels

Stopping the Daemon

Running Multiple Nodes

Background Operation

Using systemd (Linux)

Using Docker

Using nohup / screen / tmux

​Running a Node

​Prerequisites

​Start the Daemon

​Daemon Lifecycle

​Job Execution Flow

​Monitoring the Daemon

​Console Output

​Log Levels

​Stopping the Daemon

​Running Multiple Nodes

​Background Operation

​Using systemd (Linux)

​Using Docker

​Using nohup / screen / tmux

Running a Node

Prerequisites

Start the Daemon

Daemon Lifecycle

Job Execution Flow

Monitoring the Daemon

Console Output

Log Levels

Stopping the Daemon

Running Multiple Nodes

Background Operation

Using systemd (Linux)

Using Docker

Using nohup / screen / tmux