Cardano Stake Pool Operator Scripts in the Frankenwallet

The Cardano StakePool Operator Scripts (SPOS) are a popular choice for operators running stake pools: providing a few dozen utilities for setup, administration, and accounting of pools and related blockchain resources.  These scripts must run in an air-gapped environment in many important cases: especially to secure the operator’s pledge account(s) and the pool’s operational certificates.

FYI

The term stake pool is two words (see Cardano Developer Portal > Editorial Style Guide) and the term SPO is synonymous with other blockchains’ use of the term validator.

As you can verify in the SPO Scripts Mainnet documentation (please read this if you haven’t already) the scripts can be installed anywhere… but their most logical use with the Frankenwallet will be in its cold environment configuration, set up to run in offline mode: just as they would be installed on a dedicated air-gapped machine.

Assuming you are satisfied with the integrity of the scripts themselves, this will provide the same security of key handling and transaction building as when you are using the raw commands of cardano-cli directly, and following the same pattern of secure transaction workflow:

  1. first, collecting raw information from an Internet-connected machine;
  2. then, building operations & transactions in a separate, offline environment;
  3. finally, executing these operations & transactions back in the Internet-connected environment.

Prerequisites

➤ You should already have followed the Frankenwallet installation instructions to create a “cold” Frankenwallet: the default configuration, with the encrypted Linux instance set up & patched without ever having re-enabled Internet access (i.e. don’t use a “cool” Frankenwallet).

The only package required by the SPO scripts not installed by default in the Debian-based operating systems recommended here is jq which should already have been installed manually when the Frankenwallet was created (before disconnecting from the Internet permanently).

➤ The previous Cardano Secure Workflow step to Install Cardano CLI should also be complete.

tip

~/bin — the recommended location to install cardano-cli for general ease of use — is also the location expected by the SPO Scripts when they are also installed, as recommended, in ~/bin.

➤ As suggested in the SPO Scripts repository, you should be familiar with the range of commands used for Mainnet operations and already feel comfortable using some of them: since the particulars of how to use the SPO scripts themselves are beyond the scope of this documentation (you can refer back to that repository with questions or difficulties).

Though another script archive is available for testnet operations, this usage is less significant for the Frankenwallet because of the reduced need for security precautions & secure workflow.

➤ Install the scripts in Online- or Light-Mode — to complement the Offline-Mode scripts you will be installing — and verify they can run the Examples in Online-Mode.

tip

If you don’t want the overhead of maintaining a cardano-node on your Internet connected machine, you can set up that machine in Light-Mode instead… specifically, you can install the scripts in Light-Mode directly on your host machine.

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