Technical Requirements
The Basics
Since GBC is a smaller-stakes environment, it is a great place to refine new skills. Be sure to read instructions carefully and ask questions (discord channel) as needed.
- Using the Terminal: You will be required to enter commands into a terminal window. These will be simple copy-paste instructions, but familiarity with using a terminal is helpful.
- Key Management: You will use the command line to derive a key-pair for validating blocks as well as a mnemonic you will use later to derive a withdrawal pair. It is important to store these safely (offline highly recommended).
Connectivity
A reliable internet connection is key - bandwidth should not be throttled or capped. Upload bandwidth should be a minimum of 700 MB/hour with increases likely. Brief periods offline may result in small inactivity penalties, but this will be recouped quickly as long as the outage is short.
Note that synching the execution layer Gnosis Chain may take up to 12 hours depending on your setup.
Security
When setting up hardware or a VM, use proper security measures including securing the root account, setting up a firewall, and forwarding necessary ports to the correct machines from the router.
- OpenEthereum & Nethermind: 30303 TCP/UDP
- Prysm & Lighthouse: 12000 UDP, 13000 TCP
Time Sync
Your clock should be synchronized to prevent skipping block sealing.
Enter
timedatectl status , you should see similar output:1
Local time: Tue 2020-06-30 17:16:19 UTC
2
Universal time: Tue 2020-06-30 17:16:19 UTC
3
RTC time: Tue 2020-06-30 17:16:19
4
Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
5
System clock synchronized: yes
6
systemd-timesyncd.service active: yes
7
RTC in local TZ: no
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If
System clock synchronized displays yes you are good to go.If not, you can either:
- synchronize clock with NTP servers (allow UDP port 123 for both incoming and outgoing traffic) or
- use the following script to sync with google.com:
Create
fixtime.sh script and run it with watch -n 60 command in a screen1
echo sudo date -s '"$(wget -qSO- --max-redirect=0 google.com 2>&1 | grep Date: | cut -d' ' -f5-8)Z"' > fixtime.sh
2
chmod +x fixtime.sh
3
screen -S time
4
watch -n 60 ./fixtime.sh
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Press
Ctrl+A+D to leave the screenNode Requirements
Recommended requirements are met when using DappNode preconfigured hardware or a liquid staking service.
Beacon Chain Node Requirements
Minimum & Recommended specifications for running GBC clients:
Prysm Client
Prysm Minimum
- Operating System: 64-bit Linux, Mac OS X 10.14+, Windows 64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core i5–760 or AMD FX-8100 or better
- Memory: 8GB RAM
- Storage: 128GB available space SSD
- Internet: Broadband connection
Prysm Recommended
- Processor: Intel Core i7–4770 or AMD FX-8310 or better
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Storage: 256GB available space SSD
- Internet: Broadband connection
Lighthouse Client
Lighthouse Minimum
- Dual-core CPU, 2015 or newer
- 8 GB RAM
- 128 GB solid state storage
- 10 Mb/s download, 5 Mb/s upload broadband connection
Lighthouse Recommended
- Quad-core AMD Ryzen, Intel Broadwell, ARMv8 or newer
- 16 GB RAM
- 256 GB solid state storage
- 100 Mb/s download, 20 Mb/s upload broadband connection
Network utilization benchmark
For better understanding of the network throughput requirements, a benchmark was conducted on the Lighthouse v2.2.1 client running a GBC on 04.05.22.
The client was configured to maintain 100 simultenious peer connections. Inbound and outbound traffic consumption was measured while altering the number of active validators connected to the beacon node.
Validators are advised to consider those numbers when planning their infrastrusture and budget. With growth of the overall validator set, these requirements will increase over time as well. Make sure to allocate enough spare resources to account for future network growth.
Number of validators
Inbound traffic
Outbound traffic
Approximate monthly traffic
10
1.0 MB/s
1.8 MB/s
7.2 TB
32
2.4 MB/s
3.15 MB/s
14.2 TB
64
4.5 MB/s
3.8 MB/s
21.2 TB
128
4.6 MB/s
3.8 MB/s
21.5 TB
>256
4.6 MB/s
3.9 MB/s
21.7 TB
Nimbus Client
Nimbus Minimum
- Dual-core CPU, 2015 or newer
- 4 GB RAM
- 128 GB solid state storage
- 10 Mb/s download, 5 Mb/s upload broadband connection
Nimbus Recommended
- Quad-core CPU
- 8 GB RAM
- 256 GB solid state storage
- 100 Mb/s download, 20 Mb/s upload broadband connection
​
Gnosis Chain Execution Layer Node Requirements
It is optional to run your own Gnosis node. You can link GBC to an existing node through a JSON RPC endpoint, and this is the easiest method when you first setup your node. You will be encouraged to update your setup once the merge happens. If you have experience and would prefer to setup your own GC node now, here are the instructions.
GC Nodes can be run with you choice of 2 clients (OpenEthereum and Nethermind) and the following recommended minimum specs:
- OS: Ubuntu (Nethermind & OE), Windows & MacOs (Nethermind only)
- CPU: 2 cores
- RAM: 4GB
- Disk: 100gb SSD
- Git installed
git --version
Ready to Get Started?
Last modified 22d ago