Run Your Very Own Bitshares Witness Node In 3 Easy Steps

This is my first steemit post but I plan to get more active here as I slowly learn the way things work. Quite a few people like using the decentralized exchange Crypto Bridge but complain about the poor latency issues with their default nodes. I have had a lot of people ask how to do this so I decided write up a quick and easy tutorial that anyone should be able to follow and complete in just a couple minutes.

Step 1. Download the zip package from here: https://github.com/bitshares/bitshares-core/releases
Unzip the package and place it anywhere you want on your computer.

Step 2. Open your favorite text editing program (notepad++ is a good choice) Create a new file with one line of code:

witness_node.exe --rpc-endpoint="0.0.0.0:8090"
Copy and paste the line above exactly as it is into the new file you created and save it in your text editor as start.bat

Step 3. Double click the start.bat file you just created and let it sync up which may take a few hours depending on the speed of your machine and the connection.

Once it is done syncing you can now open up your Crypto Bridge desktop application like normal and enjoy very low latency. The local node you just setup should be automatically selected when you open the Crypto Bridge desktop application if it is done syncing but just to make sure you can click Settings > Access and make sure it is selected. If it has a different node selected just select your new local node. Once in a while you might have to do this if you open the application when your witness node is not fully synced up.

*Troubleshooting: If your computer crashes and the start.bat doesn't close out correctly or it fails to sync you can try going into the folder witness_node_data_dir and then deleting the folder called: blockchain and then run the start.bat again and let it should then start over and sync up.