polkadot-starship

Starship is a tool for launching local Polkadot, Kusama, Rococo, and Statemine test networks with an emphasis on scalability and customization. It enables developers and researchers to run extensive testnets with numerous validators, collators, and parachains, limited only by hardware resources, and includes optional monitoring via Prometheus and Grafana.

Key Features

• Scalable Testnets — Launch networks of any size with arbitrary numbers of validators, collators, and parachains.
• Multiple Chain Support — Supports Polkadot, Kusama, Rococo, and Statemine chains locally.
• Customizable Configuration — Easily define network topology programmatically via Ruby scripts instead of static config files.
• Local Node Experimentation — Runs nodes directly on the host (not in Docker) for easy local access and debugging.
• Integrated Monitoring — Optional launch of Prometheus and Grafana for metrics collection and visualization.

Philosophy

Starship prioritizes flexibility and hands-on control, allowing users to programmatically define complex network structures and experiment with nodes locally without containerization constraints.