nearcore | Reference client for NEAR Protocol | Blockchain library

I noticed that the near top level account on NEAR MainNet has got this access key associated with it:

I want to read telemetry data from nearcore and I know the node is compatible with Prometheus. The file config.json contains the voice telemetry, which points to NEAR block explorer:

Here are the important parts of the error

Disclosure: I work with NEAR and am currently on-boarding.

When I start up a local node on a clean machine I see that a .near folder is created in my home directory with a few configuration files (exact files seem to depend on which start_ script I run). Another folder appears inside of the .near folder called data.

Running strings ~/.near/data/*.sst in the folder spits out a few lines starting with the string "rocksdb" which led me to this reference to RocksDB

Is there any way to inspect the contents of a node's RocksDB instance?

I found Keylord but it crashes when I try to configure a new connection to the database (by pointing the connection to ~/.near/data). I didn't pursue that thread.

PSA1: sometimes it's useful to backup the ~/.near folder between node restarts if you want to reset the environment or avoid reusing old data while troubleshooting

Influenced by the discussion here, I wonder what mechanisms Near has in place from stopping the gas price from soaring if transactions volume goes down? If gas price soars too high up it will de-incentivize users from submitting more transactions creating a feedback loop leading to eventually having no transactions in the system.

reading through some documentation here and saw that part of the definition of a transaction is that all actions are performed "on top of the receiver's account" and also that the receiver account is "the account towards which the transaction will be routed."

also in the nearlib SDK, the transactions interface includes a method called signTransaction that requires receiverId as a parameter

disclosure: I work with NEAR and am currently onboarding

based on the docs (docs.nearprotocol.com) and diving into the nearcore/scripts folder, looks like there are currently 5 ways to start a local node for development and testing (ie. developing DApps, integrating with or contributing to the platform) as well as validating (as part of NEAR Stakewars)

they all have the option of starting a Docker container or compiling and running the code natively

(see repo on GitHub @nearprotocol/nearcore/scripts/start_*)

the two that seem most useful to a DApp developer are

• start_localnet and
• start_testnet

the first launches a node that is totally isolated to local development while the second connects to the NEAR TestNet (via a common list of bootnodes and a telemetry URL)

which of the above does NEAR recommend for local development?

for completeness, here all 5 startup scripts:

• start_localnet
  totally isolated, not related to NEAR TestNet at all (no bootnodes nor telemetry)
• start_testnet
  connected to NEAR TestNet via bootnodes and telemetry. apparently can also reuse existing genesis.json file if found
• start_stakewars
  if you're participating in NEAR Stakewars, this is your startup script
• start_unittest
  used by nearcore, near-bindgen and near-evm
• start_staging_testnet
  used by near-bindgen examples "cross-contract-high-level"

PSA1: near-bindgen has some well documented examples -- if you don't already, just decide now that you want to learn Rust

PSA2: near-evm seems like a proof of concept that lets you run Ethereum Smart Contracts on the NEAR Platform