Node Operators

Node operators are the backbone of the OpenFiat network — they run the reference openfiat-node binary and participate in peer discovery, gossip, content serving, and the service registry.

What a node does with no configuration at all

openfiat-node is configured entirely by command-line flags — there is no environment-variable fallback and no config file, deliberately, so that systemctl cat openfiat-node shows exactly what a running node was given instead of sending you on an archaeology exercise across shell profiles and unit files. openfiat-node --help is the whole surface.

Run it with nothing set and it already:

• generates or loads its identity (a Solana CLI-format wallet.json) and uses that one key as both its Solana signing key and its libp2p peer id;
• serves JSON-RPC, WebSocket and REST on 0.0.0.0:7080;
• listens for peers on /ip4/0.0.0.0/udp/4001/quic-v1, announces the addresses it is reachable at, and learns peers it was never handed — see Peer discovery;
• holds the content protocol records reference and serves it over bitswap on its own libp2p identity — see Content serving;
• keeps that content for a rolling 30 days (--retention), so running a node is a bounded storage commitment rather than an open-ended one.

Two things it does not do unasked: talk to Solana (--solana-rpc-url moves it from GossipOnly to RpcConnected) and produce snapshots for others (--snapshot-public-url). Both are opt-in because both make a claim to the rest of the network that only the operator can vouch for.

What is optional, and what it costs

To disable	Do this	What you give up
Solana connectivity	omit --solana-rpc-url	The node stays GossipOnly: on-chain answers come second-hand over gossip and can lag. It still serves the marketplace and relays transactions to an RPC-connected peer, and earns the reduced connectivity share.
Content serving	--no-content-serving	The node stores no attachment content and cannot answer a retrievability challenge, so it earns the reduced share. It still challenges its peers.
Producing snapshots	omit --snapshot-public-url	Nobody can bootstrap from this node. Consuming snapshots needs no configuration.
Peer discovery	not possible	It is not a flag. A node that announced no address and learned no peer would look healthy to every local check while talking to nobody.

Going further

• The full operator walkthrough — docs/getting-started.md in openfiat-core: building, every flag with its real default, the public devnet entrypoint, putting TLS and nginx in front of the node, and the on-chain program ids.
• Deployment — openfiat-infra for Docker images, the Kubernetes Helm chart, and Terraform modules; packaging/systemd and packaging/windows in openfiat-core for running the binary directly as a service.
• Local test networks — openfiat-devtools (testnet/, devnet/).
• Reputation and stake-weighted QoS — OFS-1600 in Protocol Specs.