Tendermint KMS

Tendermint KMS is a Key Management Service (KMS) that allows separating key management from Tendermint nodes. In addition it provides other advantages such as:
  • Improved security and risk management policies
  • Unified API and support for various HSM (hardware security modules)
  • Double signing protection (software or hardware based)
It is recommended that the KMS service runs in a separate physical hosts.

Install Tendermint KMS onto the node

You will need the following prerequisites:
Rust (stable; 1.56+): https://rustup.rs/
C compiler: e.g. gcc, clang
pkg-config
libusb (1.0+). Install instructions for common platforms
✅ Debian/Ubuntu
apt install libusb-1.0-0-dev
✅ RedHat/CentOS
yum install libusb1-devel
✅ macOS (Homebrew)
brew install libusb
For x86_64 architecture only:
Configure RUSTFLAGS environment variable:
export RUSTFLAGS=-Ctarget-feature=+aes,+ssse3
We are ready to install KMS. There are 2 ways to do this: compile from source or install with Rusts cargo-install. We’ll use the first option.

Compile from source code

The following example adds --features=ledger to enable Ledger support. tmkms can be compiled directly from the git repository source code, using the following commands:
gh repo clone iqlusioninc/tmkms && cd tmkms
[...]
cargo build --release --features=ledger
Alternatively, substitute --features=yubihsm to enable YubiHSM support.
If successful, it will produce the tmkms executable located at: ./target/release/tmkms.

Configuration

A KMS can be configured using the following HSMs

YubiHSM

Detailed information on how to setup a KMS with YubiHSM 2 can be found here.

Ledger Tendermint app

Detailed information on how to setup a KMS with Ledger Tendermint App can be found here.