simplexmq/scripts/resolver/README.md

Self-hosted SNRC stack

One docker compose up runs the self-hosted SimpleX Namespace (SNRC) backend against Ethereum mainnet (where the .testing contracts live):

#	Component	What it does
1	reth + nimbus	self-hosted Ethereum node (--minimal — enough for the resolver's eth_call at chain head)
2	resolver	the REST resolver the smp-server's [NAMES] role queries (snrc-resolve.py)

Requirements

• Docker + Compose v2.
• ≥ 300 GB NVMe SSD for reth --minimal (~260 GB on mainnet; TLC, not QLC — QLC stalls during sync) + 32 GB RAM, fast multi-core CPU.
• ~1 day for the initial reth sync. The resolver returns errors until reth has caught up — that's expected.
• Firewall: open p2p ports 30303 (tcp/udp) and 9000 (tcp/udp).

1. Configure

Edit .env — the defaults work as-is; override only if needed:

NETWORK=mainnet                                               # default
TRUSTED_NODE_URL=https://mainnet-checkpoint-sync.attestant.io # default

Everything else (NAT) has a working default baked into docker-compose.yml; uncomment the hints in .env only to override.

2. Run

cd scripts/resolver
docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f reth resolver

depends_on handles ordering automatically (start node → start resolver).

3. Wait for the node to sync

docker compose logs --tail=20 reth

This is the long pole (~1 day on mainnet). Until reth is synced the resolver returns 502.

Verify

Run these once the stack is up (the node-dependent ones pass after sync):

1. reth is reachable and reporting a block:

curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8545 \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_blockNumber","params":[],"id":1}' | jq

2. resolver is healthy:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8000/health | jq
# → {"ok": true, "rpc": "http://reth:8545", "registries": {"testing": "0x…", "simplex": ""}}

3. resolver resolves a live name (foobar.testing is a populated test name):

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8000/resolve/foobar.testing | jq
# → {"name":"foobar.testing","nickname":"Foo","simplexContact":["https://smp16.simplex.im/a#…"], … }

4. the route your router will call (check 3 passes on an older resolver too):

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8000/v2/resolve/foobar.testing | jq
# → {"type":"registered","expires":1780000000,"graceUntil":…,"nameRecord":{…}}

Wire your smp-server: in its [NAMES] section set resolver_endpoint: http://127.0.0.1:8000 (no auth needed for loopback).

Ports (all loopback unless noted)

Service	Host	Purpose
reth JSON-RPC	127.0.0.1:8545	smp-server RPC
reth p2p	:30303 tcp/udp	Ethereum sync (open on firewall)
nimbus p2p	:9000 tcp/udp	beacon sync (open on firewall)
nimbus REST	127.0.0.1:5052	beacon API
resolver	127.0.0.1:8000	SNRC REST (/v2/resolve, /resolve, /health)

Caveats

• All images track :latest (reth, nimbus) — you get upstream fixes on each docker compose pull; re-run the verify checks after pulling.
• All ports bind to loopback; expose only what you put behind a TLS reverse proxy.

Teardown

docker compose down       # stop, keep all state
docker compose down -v    # also wipe volumes → full re-sync

down -v wipes the chain data (full re-sync on the next up).

---

Resolver API reference

The resolver (snrc-resolve.py, host 127.0.0.1:8000) is also runnable standalone for local dev (no Docker), via uv:

uv run scripts/resolver/service/snrc-resolve.py  # defaults to local reth + mainnet .testing

Three routes, versioned separately from the protocol so each only changes when its own shape does:

Route	Called by	Answers
/v2/resolve/<query>	routers from SMP v22	a NameRegistration
/resolve/<name>	routers before SMP v22	a name record, flat
/health	anyone	readiness

/v1/resolve/<name> is an alias for /resolve/<name>.

v2: /v2/resolve/<query>

The body is the SMP protocol's NameRegistration, which the router decodes as is and forwards; translating the registry's model to it is this resolver's job. Its type is registered, available or reserved, and the fields each one carries are specified once, in the Name response section of protocol/simplex-messaging.md. It is the wire format, so it is documented with the wire.

Two things follow from that and are worth stating here. Expiry and grace belong to the registration, not to the record: expires and graceUntil sit beside nameRecord, not inside it. And a name nobody holds is not an error: it answers 200 with type: available and its price, so no status code from this route means "not registered".

Status	Meaning
200	a registration: registered, available or reserved
400	tldNotConfigured, notFullyQualified
502	noPriceOracle, labelNotRecorded, an unreadable status, or upstreamError

Error bodies carry name and a fixed error code to branch on. Only upstreamError adds a message; the v1 route always adds one.

labelNotRecorded means the registrar holds the name but never recorded its label, so a hashed query cannot be answered with a name. See Querying by labelhash.

A subname reports the expiry and grace of the 2LD above it, since that is what bounds its lifetime. A subname nobody created reports as not registered.

v1: /resolve/<name>

What routers before SMP v22 call. Its shape is unrelated to v2's: the record is flat, and status, expires, graceEnds, reasonCode and reason sit alongside its fields.

v1 response shape

{
  "name": "foobar.testing",
  "nickname": "Foo", "website": "https://foo.bar", "location": "",
  "simplexContact": ["https://smp16.simplex.im/a#…", "https://smp11…"],  // primary first, fallbacks after
  "simplexChannel": [],
  "eth": null, "btc": "bc1q…", "xmr": "4ANz…", "dot": "139G…",
  "owner": "0xd83b…", "resolver": "0x80fa…",
  "status": "registered",      // registered | grace | expired | unregistered | unknown
  "expires": 1780000000,       // Unix seconds; when the registration ends
  "graceEnds": 1787776000,     // expires + GRACE_PERIOD; last moment the owner can renew
  "reasonCode": null,          // set when the name is held back as well
  "reason": null               // set when the name is held back as well
}

simplexContact/simplexChannel are arrays (a name can advertise multiple SMP servers; clients try them in order). On-chain they're a single ;-separated text record; the resolver splits/trims/drops-empties. Address encodings are canonical per chain (EIP-55 / bech32 / SS58 / Monero-base58). Subnames work identically (bar.foobar.testing).

v1 registration status and expiry

A response carries status, expires and graceEnds whenever the resolver read them, a successful resolve included, so a client that has just resolved a name already knows when it expires. Both timestamps are Unix seconds, and null when they could not be read.

status	Meaning
registered	live; expires is when that ends
grace	lapsed, but only the previous owner may renew it, until graceEnds
expired	lapsed and past grace; anyone may register it
unregistered	never registered, and free to take
unknown	no SNRC_REGISTRAR_<TLD> configured, so status could not be read

A reservation is orthogonal to the status: a name held back by the registry carries reasonCode and reason whether or not it is registered.

grace and expired are told apart by the registrar's own available(id) rule, expires + GRACE_PERIOD < now. GRACE_PERIOD is read from the contract rather than assumed, and now is the latest block's timestamp rather than the host clock, which the registrar compares against too, so a machine with a wrong clock cannot misreport a registration. That rule alone is not enough: it also holds for a name nobody ever registered (0 + GRACE_PERIOD < now), so a zero expiry is what separates never registered from registered and since released.

A subname reports the status of the 2LD above it, which is only as good as the name it sits under. A subname nobody created answers 404 unregistered.

v1 errors

Every non-2xx body carries two fields: error is a fixed code to branch on, and message is a sentence for a human. Match on error, never on message, which is free to change.

{"name": "nope.testing", "error": "unregistered",
 "message": "this name has never been registered",
 "status": "unregistered", "expires": null, "graceEnds": null}

The codes are tldNotConfigured, notFullyQualified, unregistered, expired, noSuchRoute and upstreamError. When the registration is what went wrong, error and status hold the same value, so one field is enough to read.

upstreamError says only which exception type the RPC call raised. The text goes to the resolver's log instead, because SNRC_RPC can carry a provider key and urlopen puts the URL it failed on into the message. It is also the answer when a registrar, controller or oracle address has no contract behind it: the empty reply is refused rather than read as zero, which would make every name look free.

v1 status codes

Status	Meaning
200	resolved (status is registered or grace, or unknown when no registrar is configured)
400	TLD not configured, or not a fully-qualified name
404	unregistered
410	expired: lapsed and past grace, so anyone may take it
502	upstream RPC error / reth not synced

Querying by labelhash

A client asking whether a name is free is usually about to register it, and whoever runs the resolver could register it first. To avoid that, send the keccak hash of the label in ENS's [<64 hex>] form instead of the label:

# instead of /resolve/acme.testing
curl -s "http://127.0.0.1:8000/resolve/[$(printf acme | keccak-256sum | cut -d' ' -f1)].testing"

namehash is keccak(parent || keccak(label)), so this reaches the same node and returns the same record. The registrar keys nameExpires and reservedNames on the labelhash too, so the status fields do not need the label either. The resolver learns the name only by guessing the label and hashing it.

Only the second-level label is a registry key, and status decodes a bracket there at any depth. The record does not: a bracket is decoded only in a two-label name, so sub.[<hash>].testing is not a supported query. Subname labels stay text; a bracket label left of the 2LD is an ordinary label. Routers from v22 send every 2LD this way, so a registrable name normally never reaches this service.

On v2, read type: only available means the name is free. On v1, read status: a name is free on unregistered (404) and on expired (410), every other status means somebody holds it, and a reasonCode means the registry will refuse it whatever the status says.

The hash must be keccak-256. openssl dgst -sha3-256 and sha3sum compute SHA3-256, a different function that returns 64 valid-looking hex characters pointing at the wrong node.

The resolver lowercases the query before matching, so uppercase hex works too. Clients that refuse raw brackets in a path can percent-encode them as %5B and %5D.

Brackets cannot collide with a real name: they are invalid in a normalised ENS name, and a [<64 hex>] label is 66 bytes against the registrar's maxLabelLength of 63. A plain 0x… label is not treated as a hash, since that is an ordinary, registrable name.

Only 2LDs can be queried this way, as only a 2LD can be raced for: subnames are created by the 2LD's owner. A bracket label in a subname is hashed as written, so it points at a node nobody can own. ENS tooling accepts the bracketed form at any depth; this resolver does not, on purpose.

This hides interest in a name and nothing else: the registration itself is public, and commit-reveal covers that step. A short or well-known label is easy to guess by hashing candidates, and the reveal publishes the labelhash, so an operator who logged the query can match it to the name afterwards.

What a name costs

The controller's prices() names the price oracle, so no extra configuration is needed beyond SNRC_CONTROLLER_<TLD>. A SimplexPriceOracle exposes its curve through prices(), in US cents per year, which is the unit this API carries.

An ENS-shaped oracle exposes only price1Letter()..price6Letter(), in attoUSD per second, and charges a premium on a lapsed name that it does not expose. A quote from one is therefore only safe for a name that was never registered: an expired name gets no price rather than one below what the registrar charges.

Set SNRC_CONTROLLER_<TLD> wherever SNRC_REGISTRAR_<TLD> is. Without a controller there is no oracle, so no name can be priced.

Upgrade this service before the routers that query it. Routers from SMP v22 call /v2/resolve, which an older resolver does not serve. Every name then answers ERR NAME RESOLVER "HTTP 404" until this service is upgraded, while /health still reports it as ready.

Why a name is reserved

v2 carries the controller's reason as reservedReason. v1 carries the same word as reasonCode, plus reason, an English sentence for a human reading this API. Clients should branch on the word and phrase it themselves, in the user's language.

reasonCode	Meaning
internal	reserved for SimpleX
trademark	reserved to protect a trademark
community	reserved for the community
unknown	a reason added to the contract after this resolver; still reserved

These are SimplexController.Reason, where 0 means not reserved. A controller from before the enum stores a boolean, whose true decodes as 1, which is why 1 reads as internal, so nothing needs migrating.

Configuring addresses

The resolver reads three contracts, each configured per TLD.

The registry answers who owns a node, and /resolve reads the records from it. The registrar (ERC-721) holds nameExpires and GRACE_PERIOD, which is where every expiry field comes from, and labelOf, which is how a hashed query is answered with a name. A name registered without recording its label cannot answer one, and /v2/resolve refuses it rather than answer with a name the client will reject. With no registrar for a TLD, /resolve still works and reports "status": "unknown". The controller holds reservedNames, which is where reasonCode comes from. With no controller a held-back name reads as not reserved, and no name can be priced.

All three default to the mainnet .testing deployment. .simplex is unset until it is deployed.

The controller default is the proxy, not SimplexControllerImpl. Storage lives in the proxy, so the implementation address answers nothing. The two deployment files use different names for that proxy: deployments.mainnet.testing.json records it under the ENS role name ETHRegistrarController, and verification.mainnet.testing.json calls it SimplexControllerProxy. Both are the same address, and it is the one used here.

To override any of them, set SNRC_REGISTRY_<TLD>, SNRC_REGISTRAR_<TLD> or SNRC_CONTROLLER_<TLD> on the resolver service in docker-compose.yml, or as env vars when you run the script directly.