Mainnet chainspec bootnodes are unreachable over the advertised /ws transport — fresh nodes cannot bootstrap (Idle, 0 peers)

[potterbm-cb]

What is broken?

The two bootnodes shipped in the Vara mainnet chainspec (vara/node/res/vara.json) both advertise a WebSocket transport (/tcp/30333/ws), but neither serves a working /ws endpoint:

• vara-connect-2 is unreachable at every layer — its DNS name resolves to
  Cloudflare and TCP/30333 is filtered.
• vara-connect-1 is alive on plain TCP/30333, but does not respond
  to a WebSocket upgrade on that port, so the /ws multiaddr in the chainspec
  fails.

As a result, a fresh node started from the shipped chainspec (with no external peer configuration) cannot bootstrap and sits at Idle (0 peers). This is version-independent — the bootNodes list is byte-identical across v1.9.1 through v2.0.0/master.

Problem code

vara/node/res/vara.json:

"bootNodes": [
  "/dns4/vara-connect-1.vara-network.io/tcp/30333/ws/p2p/12D3KooWLDpZ5sWtSmZtiHXBstoQVwMAZ5yRWpDUBdjQHV7vBLHy",
  "/dns4/vara-connect-2.vara-network.io/tcp/30333/ws/p2p/12D3KooWCJas1xGRDUC8nnSvfSiC1RcTXWaAef6oom1vGvqUMZV7"
]

Confirmed identical onv1.9.1, v1.10.0, and v2.0.0

The fix: remove the /ws

Using /dns4/vara-connect-1.vara-network.io/tcp/30333/p2p/12D3KooWLDpZ5sWtSmZtiHXBstoQVwMAZ5yRWpDUBdjQHV7vBLHy with the --bootnodes flag DOES work.

Steps to reproduce

Start a fresh node using only the shipped chainspec bootnodes and observe it never acquires peers:

  gear --chain vara --tmp \
    --reserved-only \
    --reserved-nodes "/dns4/vara-connect-1.vara-network.io/tcp/30333/ws/p2p/12D3KooWLDpZ5sWtSmZtiHXBstoQVwMAZ5yRWpDUBdjQHV7vBLHy" \
    --reserved-nodes "/dns4/vara-connect-2.vara-network.io/tcp/30333/ws/p2p/12D3KooWCJas1xGRDUC8nnSvfSiC1RcTXWaAef6oom1vGvqUMZV7" \
    -l sub-libp2p=debug

Expected behavior

The node connects to at least one bootnode over the advertised transport and begins syncing.

Actual behavior

The node fails to dial both bootnodes over /ws and stays at Idle (0 peers):

2026-09-22 00:00:20.341  INFO main sc_cli::runner: Gear Node    
2026-09-22 00:00:20.341  INFO main sc_cli::runner: ✌️  version 1.10.0-600576ccafa    
2026-09-22 00:00:20.341  INFO main sc_cli::runner: ❤️  by Gear Technologies, 2021-2026    
2026-09-22 00:00:20.341  INFO main sc_cli::runner: 📋 Chain specification: Vara Network    
2026-09-22 00:00:20.341  INFO main sc_cli::runner: 🏷  Node name: aboard-box-7997    
2026-09-22 00:00:20.341  INFO main sc_cli::runner: 👤 Role: FULL    
2026-09-22 00:00:20.341  INFO main sc_cli::runner: 💾 Database: RocksDb at /tmp/substrateAGgkDQ/chains/vara_network/db/full    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.442  INFO main sc_service::client::client: 🔨 Initializing Genesis block/state (state: 0x5068…e5dc, header-hash: 0xfe1b…3763)    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.454  INFO main grandpa: 👴 Loading GRANDPA authority set from genesis on what appears to be first startup.    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.454  INFO main babe: 👶 Creating empty BABE epoch changes on what appears to be first startup.    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.455  INFO main sub-libp2p: Running libp2p network backend    

...SNIP...

2026-09-22 00:00:23.465  INFO main sc_service::builder: 📦 Highest known block at #0    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.465  INFO main sc_rpc_server: Running JSON-RPC server: addr=127.0.0.1:34933,[::1]:9944    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.465  INFO main sc_sysinfo: 🏁 CPU single core score: 972.68 MiBs, parallelism score: 969.96 MiBs with expected cores: 8    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.465  INFO main sc_sysinfo: 🏁 Memory score: 5.15 GiBs    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.465  INFO main sc_sysinfo: 🏁 Disk score (seq. writes): 297.89 MiBs    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.465  INFO main sc_sysinfo: 🏁 Disk score (rand. writes): 62.58 MiBs    
2026-09-22 00:00:23.467  INFO tokio-runtime-worker libp2p_mdns::behaviour: discovered: 12D3KooWMjvvuH7qbgzakDWxfi9okad7ko9YV8ZQS12DdzHfVVH7 /ip4/10.230.10.113/tcp/30333/ws    
2026-09-22 00:00:28.466  INFO tokio-runtime-worker substrate: 💤 Idle (0 peers), best: #0 (0xfe1b…3763), finalized #0 (0xfe1b…3763), ⬇ 0 ⬆ 0    
2026-09-22 00:00:33.466  INFO tokio-runtime-worker substrate: 💤 Idle (0 peers), best: #0 (0xfe1b…3763), finalized #0 (0xfe1b…3763), ⬇ 0 ⬆ 0    
2026-09-22 00:00:38.466  INFO tokio-runtime-worker substrate: 💤 Idle (0 peers), best: #0 (0xfe1b…3763), finalized #0 (0xfe1b…3763), ⬇ 0 ⬆ 0

Additional context

Did some testing on the included bootnodes:

• vara-connect-2.vara-network.io — resolves to Cloudflare; TCP/30333 times out. Unreachable.
• vara-connect-1.vara-network.io — TCP/30333 open, but the WebSocket upgrade receives no "101 Switching Protocols" (times out / empty reply). The /ws transport is not served.

[ukint-vs]

@potterbm-cb, thanks for the detailed report. We’ve updated #5646 to replace the old bootnodes with vara-connect-1.vara.network, advertising WebSocket on port 30333 and plain TCP on port 30331; both transports now bootstrap and sync successfully. Before the next node release, you can use the updated chain spec directly with gear --chain ./vara.json; no new binary is required.

[potterbm-cb]

@ukint-vs Thank you!