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Erigon is an implementation of Ethereum (execution client with light client for consensus layer), on the efficiencyfrontier.Archive Nodeby default.

• System Requirements

• Usage

  • Getting Started
  • Logging
  • Testnets
  • Block Production
  • Windows
  • GoDoc
  • Beacon Chain
  • Dev Chain

• Key features

  • More Efficient State Storage
  • Faster Initial Sync
  • JSON-RPC daemon
  • Run all components by docker-compose
  • Grafana dashboard

• Documentation

• FAQ

• Getting in touch

  • Erigon Discord Server
  • Reporting security issues/concerns
  • Team

• Known issues

  • htop shows incorrect memory usage

Disclaimer: this software is currently a tech preview. We will do our best to keep it stable and make no breakingchanges but we don't guarantee anything. Things can and will break.

Important defaults: Erigon is an Archive Node by default (to remove history see:--prune flagsinerigon --help). We don't allow change this flag after first start.

In-depth links are marked by the microscope sign (🔬)

• For an Archive node of Ethereum Mainnet we recommend >=3TB storage space: 1.8TB state (as of March 2022),200GB temp files (can symlink or mount folder<datadir>/temp to another disk). Ethereum Mainnet Full node (see--prune* flags): 400Gb (April 2022).

• Goerli Full node (see--prune* flags): 189GB on Beta, 114GB on Alpha (April 2022).

• Gnosis Chain Archive: 370GB (January 2023).

• BSC Archive: 7TB. BSC Full: 1TB. (April 2022).

• Polygon Mainnet Archive: 5TB. Polygon Mumbai Archive: 1TB. (April 2022).

SSD or NVMe. Do not recommend HDD - on HDD Erigon will always stay N blocks behind chain tip, but not fall behind.Bear in mind that SSD performance deteriorates when close to capacity.

RAM: >=16GB, 64-bit architecture.

Golang version >= 1.19; GCC 10+ or Clang; On Linux: kernel > v4

🔬 more details on disk storagehereandhere.

For building the latest stable release (this will be suitable for most users just wanting to run a node):

git clone --branch stable --single-branch https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon.gitcd erigonmake erigon./build/bin/erigon

You can checkthe list of releases for release notes.

For building the bleeding edge development branch:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon.gitcd erigongit checkout develmake erigon./build/bin/erigon

Default--snapshots formainnet,goerli,gnosis,bsc. Other networks now have default--snapshots=false.Increasedownload speed by flag--torrent.download.rate=20mb.🔬 SeeDownloader docs

Use--datadir to choose where to store data.

Use--chain=gnosis forGnosis Chain,--chain=bor-mainnet for Polygon Mainnet,and--chain=mumbai for Polygon Mumbai.For Gnosis Chain you need aConsensus Layer client alongsideErigon (https://docs.gnosischain.com/node/guide/beacon).

Runningmake help will list and describe the convenience commands available in theMakefile.

• chaindata: recent blocks, state, recent state history. low-latency disk recommended.
• snapshots: old blocks, old state history. can symlink/mount it to cheaper disk. mostly immutable.
• temp: can grow to ~100gb, but usually empty. can symlink/mount it to cheaper disk.
• txpool: pending transactions. safe to remove.
• nodes: p2p peers. safe to remove.

Flags:

• verbosity
• log.console.verbosity (overriding alias forverbosity)
• log.json
• log.console.json (alias forlog.json)
• log.dir.path
• log.dir.verbosity
• log.dir.json

In order to log only to the stdout/stderr the--verbosity (orlog.console.verbosity) flag can be used to supply anint value specifying the highest output log level:

  LvlCrit = 0  LvlError = 1  LvlWarn = 2  LvlInfo = 3  LvlDebug = 4  LvlTrace = 5

To set an output dir for logs to be collected on disk, please set--log.dir.path. The flag--log.dir.verbosity isalso available to control the verbosity of this logging, with the same int value as above, or the string value e.g. 'debug' or 'info'. Default verbosity is 'debug' (4), for disk logging.

Log format can be set to json by the use of the boolean flagslog.json orlog.console.json, or for the diskoutput--log.dir.json.

Erigon by default is "all in one binary" solution, but it's possible start TxPool as separated processes.Same true about: JSON RPC layer (RPCDaemon), p2p layer (Sentry), history download layer (Downloader), consensus.Don't start services as separated processes unless you have clear reason for it: resource limiting, scale, replace byyour own implementation, security.How to start Erigon's services as separated processes, see indocker-compose.yml.

On Ethereum Mainnet, Görli, and Sepolia, the Engine API can be disabled in favour of the Erigon native EmbeddedConsensus Layer.If you want to use the internal Consensus Layer, run Erigon with flag--internalcl.Warning: Staking (block production) is not possible with the embedded CL.

If you would like to give Erigon a try, but do not have spare 2TB on your drive, a good option is to start syncing oneof the public testnets, Görli. It syncs much quicker, and does not take so much disk space:

git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon.gitcd erigonmake erigon./build/bin/erigon --datadir=<your_datadir> --chain=goerli

Please note the--datadir option that allows you to store Erigon files in a non-default location, in this example,ingoerli subdirectory of the current directory. Name of the directory--datadir does not have to match the name ofthe chain in--chain.

Disclaimer: Not supported/tested for Gnosis Chain and Polygon Network (In Progress)

Support only remote-miners.

• To enable, add--mine --miner.etherbase=... or--mine --miner.miner.sigkey=... flags.
• Other supported options:--miner.extradata,--miner.notify,--miner.gaslimit,--miner.gasprice,--miner.gastarget
• JSON-RPC supports methods: eth_coinbase , eth_hashrate, eth_mining, eth_getWork, eth_submitWork, eth_submitHashrate
• JSON-RPC supports websocket methods: newPendingTransaction
• TODO:
  • we don't broadcast mined blocks to p2p-networkyet,but it's easy to accomplish
  • eth_newPendingTransactionFilter
  • eth_newBlockFilter
  • eth_newFilter
  • websocket Logs

🔬 Detailed explanation ishere.

Windows users may run erigon in 3 possible ways:

• Build executable binaries natively for Windows using providedwmake.ps1 PowerShell script. Usage syntax is the sameasmake command so you have to run.\wmake.ps1 [-target] <targetname>. Example:.\wmake.ps1 erigon builds erigonexecutable. All binaries are placed in.\build\bin\ subfolder. There are some requirements for a successful nativebuild on windows :

  • Git for Windows must be installed. If you're cloning this repository is verylikely you already have it
  • GO Programming Language must be installed. Minimum required version is 1.19
  • GNU CC Compiler at least version 10 (is highly suggested that you installchocolatey package manager - seefollowing point)
  • If you need to build MDBX tools (i.e..\wmake.ps1 db-tools)thenChocolatey package manager for Windows must be installed. By Chocolatey you needto install the following components :cmake,make,mingw bychoco install cmake make mingw. Make sureWindows System "Path" variable has:C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\mingw\tools\install\mingw64\bin

  Important note about Anti-VirusesDuring MinGW's compiler detection phase some temporary executables are generated to test compiler capabilities. It'sbeen reported some anti-virus programs detect those files as possibly infected byWin64/Kryptic.CIS trojan horse (ora variant of it). Although those are false positives we have no control over 100+ vendors of security products forWindows and their respective detection algorithms and we understand this might make your experience with Windowsbuilds uncomfortable. To workaround the issue you might either set exclusions for your antivirus specificallyforbuild\bin\mdbx\CMakeFiles sub-folder of the cloned repo or you can run erigon using the following other twooptions

• Use Docker : seedocker-compose.yml

• Use WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)strictly on version 2. Under this option you can build Erigon just as youwould on a regular Linux distribution. You can point your data also to any of the mounted Windows partitions (eg./mnt/c/[...],/mnt/d/[...] etc) but in such case be advised performance is impacted: this is due to the factthose mount points useDrvFS which is anetwork file systemand, additionally, MDBX locks the db for exclusive access which implies only one process at a time can access data.This has consequences on the running ofrpcdaemon which has to be configured asRemote DB even ifit is executed on the very same computer. If instead your data is hosted on the native Linux filesystem nonlimitations apply.Please also note the default WSL2 environment has its own IP address which does not match the one of the networkinterface of Windows host: take this into account when configuring NAT for port 30303 on your router.

You can set Erigon flags through a YAML or TOML configuration file with the flag--config. The flags set in theconfigurationfile can be overwritten by writing the flags directly on Erigon command line

./build/bin/erigon --config ./config.yaml --chain=goerli

Assuming we havechain : "mainnet" in our configuration file, by adding--chain=goerli allows the overwrite of theflag insideof the yaml configuration file and sets the chain to goerli

Example of setting up TOML config file

`datadir = 'your datadir'port = 1111chain = "mainnet"http = true"private.api.addr"="localhost:9090""http.api" = ["eth","debug","net"]

Example of setting up a YAML config file

datadir : 'your datadir'port : 1111chain : "mainnet"http : trueprivate.api.addr : "localhost:9090"http.api : ["eth","debug","net"]

Erigon can be used as an Execution Layer (EL) for Consensus Layer clients (CL). Default configuration is OK.

If your CL client is on a different device, add--authrpc.addr 0.0.0.0 (Engine API listens on localhost by default)as well as--authrpc.vhosts <CL host>.

In order to establish a secure connection between the Consensus Layer and the Execution Layer, a JWT secret key isautomatically generated.

The JWT secret key will be present in the datadir by default under the name ofjwt.hex and its path can be specifiedwith the flag--authrpc.jwtsecret.

This piece of info needs to be specified in the Consensus Layer as well in order to establish connection successfully.More information can be foundhere.

Once Erigon is running, you need to point your CL client to<erigon address>:8551,where<erigon address> is eitherlocalhost or the IP address of the device running Erigon, and also point to the JWTsecret path created by Erigon.

Define 6 flags to avoid conflicts:--datadir --port --http.port --authrpc.port --torrent.port --private.api.addr.Example of multiple chains on the same machine:

# mainnet./build/bin/erigon --datadir="<your_mainnet_data_path>" --chain=mainnet --port=30303 --http.port=8545 --authrpc.port=8551 --torrent.port=42069 --private.api.addr=127.0.0.1:9090 --http --ws --http.api=eth,debug,net,trace,web3,erigon# rinkeby./build/bin/erigon --datadir="<your_rinkeby_data_path>" --chain=rinkeby --port=30304 --http.port=8546 --authrpc.port=8552 --torrent.port=42068 --private.api.addr=127.0.0.1:9091 --http --ws --http.api=eth,debug,net,trace,web3,erigon

Quote your path if it has spaces.

🔬 Detailed explanation isDEV_CHAIN.

🔬 See moredetailedoverview of functionality and current limitations. Itis being updated on recurring basis.

Flat KV storage. Erigon uses a key-value database and storing accounts and storage in a simple way.

🔬 See our detailed DB walkthroughhere.

Preprocessing. For some operations, Erigon uses temporary files to preprocess data before inserting it into the mainDB. That reduces write amplification and DB inserts are orders of magnitude quicker.

🔬 See our detailed ETL explanationhere.

Plain state.

Single accounts/state trie. Erigon uses a single Merkle trie for both accounts and the storage.

Erigon uses a rearchitected full sync algorithm fromGo-Ethereum that is split into"stages".

🔬 See more detailed explanation in theStaged Sync Readme

It uses the same network primitives and is compatible with regular go-ethereum nodes that are using full sync, you donot need any special sync capabilities for Erigon to sync.

When reimagining the full sync, with focus on batching data together and minimize DB overwrites. That makes it possibleto sync Ethereum mainnet in under 2 days if you have a fast enough network connection and an SSD drive.

Examples of stages are:

• Downloading headers;

• Downloading block bodies;

• Recovering senders' addresses;

• Executing blocks;

• Validating root hashes and building intermediate hashes for the state Merkle trie;

• [...]

Most of Erigon's components (txpool, rpcdaemon, snapshots downloader, sentry, ...) can work inside Erigon and asindependent process.

To enable built-in RPC server:--http and--ws (sharing same port with http)

Run RPCDaemon as separated process: this daemon can use local DB (with running Erigon or on snapshot of a database) orremote DB (run on another server).🔬 SeeRPC-Daemon docs

This works regardless of whether RPC daemon is on the same computer with Erigon, or on a different one. They use TPCsocket connection to pass data between them. To use this mode, run Erigon in one terminal window

make erigon./build/bin/erigon --private.api.addr=localhost:9090 --http=falsemake rpcdaemon./build/bin/rpcdaemon --private.api.addr=localhost:9090 --http.api=eth,erigon,web3,net,debug,trace,txpool

9090 erigon,9091 sentry,9092 consensus engine,9093 torrent downloader,9094 transactions pool

Supported JSON-RPC calls (eth,debug,net,web3):

For a details on the implementation status of eachcommand,see this table.

Docker allows for building and running Erigon via containers. This alleviates the need for installing build dependenciesonto the host OS.

User UID/GID need to be synchronized between the host OS and container so files are written with correct permission.

You may wish to setup a dedicated user/group on the host OS, in which case the followingmake targets are available.

# create "erigon" usermake user_linux# ormake user_macos

There is a.env.example file in the root of the repo.

• DOCKER_UID - The UID of the docker user
• DOCKER_GID - The GID of the docker user
• XDG_DATA_HOME - The data directory which will be mounted to the docker containers

If not specified, the UID/GID will use the current user.

A good choice forXDG_DATA_HOME is to use the~erigon/.ethereum directory created by helpertargetsmake user_linux ormake user_macos.

In all cases,XDG_DATA_HOME (specified or default) must be writeable by the user UID/GID in docker, which will bedetermined by theDOCKER_UID andDOCKER_GID at build time.

If a build or service startup is failing due to permissions, check that all the directories, UID, and GID controlled bythese environment variables are correct.

Next command starts: Erigon on port 30303, rpcdaemon on port 8545, prometheus on port 9090, and grafana on port 3000.

## Will mount ~/.local/share/erigon to /home/erigon/.local/share/erigon inside container#make docker-compose## or## if you want to use a custom data directory# or, if you want to use different uid/gid for a dedicated user## To solve this, pass in the uid/gid parameters into the container.## DOCKER_UID: the user id# DOCKER_GID: the group id# XDG_DATA_HOME: the data directory (default: ~/.local/share)## Note: /preferred/data/folder must be read/writeable on host OS by user with UID/GID given#       if you followed above instructions## Note: uid/gid syntax below will automatically use uid/gid of running user so this syntax#       is intended to be run via the dedicated user setup earlier#DOCKER_UID=$(id -u) DOCKER_GID=$(id -g) XDG_DATA_HOME=/preferred/data/folder DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 COMPOSE_DOCKER_CLI_BUILD=1 make docker-compose## if you want to run the docker, but you are not logged in as the $ERIGON_USER# then you'll need to adjust the syntax above to grab the correct uid/gid## To run the command via another user, use#ERIGON_USER=erigonsudo -u${ERIGON_USER} DOCKER_UID=$(id -u${ERIGON_USER}) DOCKER_GID=$(id -g${ERIGON_USER}) XDG_DATA_HOME=~${ERIGON_USER}/.ethereum DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 COMPOSE_DOCKER_CLI_BUILD=1 make docker-compose

Makefile creates the initial directories for erigon, prometheus and grafana. The PID namespace is shared between erigonand rpcdaemon which is required to open Erigon's DB from another process (RPCDaemon local-mode).See:https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon/pull/2392/files

If your docker installation requires the docker daemon to run as root (which is by default), you will need to prefixthe command above withsudo. However, it is sometimes recommended running docker (and therefore its containers) as anon-root user for security reasons. For more information about how to do this, refer tothis article.

Windows support for docker-compose is not ready yet. Please help us with .ps1 port.

docker-compose up prometheus grafana,detailed docs.

old data

Disabled by default. To enable see./build/bin/erigon --help for flags--prune

The./docs directory includes a lot of useful but outdated documentation. For code locatedin the./cmd directory, their respective documentation can be found in./cmd/*/README.md.A more recent collation of developments and happenings in Erigon can be found in theErigon Blog.

• Baseline (ext4 SSD): 16Gb RAM sync takes 6 days, 32Gb - 5 days, 64Gb - 4 days
• +1 day on "zfs compression=off". +2 days on "zfs compression=on" (2x compression ratio). +3 days on btrfs.
• -1 day on NVMe

Detailed explanation:./docs/programmers_guide/db_faq.md

Typically, 30303 and 30304 are exposed to the internet to allow incoming peering connections. 9090 is exposed onlyinternally for rpcdaemon or other connections, (e.g. rpcdaemon -> erigon).Port 8551 (JWT authenticated) is exposed only internally forEngine API JSON-RPC queries from the Consensus Layernode.

Typically, 8545 is exposed only internally for JSON-RPC queries. Both HTTP and WebSocket and GraphQL are on the sameport.

Typically, a sentry process will run one eth/xx protocol (e.g. eth/66) and will be exposed to the internet on 30303.Port9091 is for internal gRCP connections (e.g erigon -> sentry).

Optional flags can be enabled that enable pprof or metrics (or both) - however, they both run on 6060 by default, soyou'll have to change one if you want to run both at the same time. use--help with the binary for more info.

Reserved for future use:gRPC ports:9092 consensus engine,9093 snapshot downloader,9094 TxPool

0.0.0.0/8             "This" Network             RFC 1122, Section 3.2.1.310.0.0.0/8            Private-Use Networks       RFC 1918100.64.0.0/10         Carrier-Grade NAT (CGN)    RFC 6598, Section 7127.16.0.0/12         Private-Use Networks       RFC 1918 169.254.0.0/16        Link Local                 RFC 3927172.16.0.0/12         Private-Use Networks       RFC 1918192.0.0.0/24          IETF Protocol Assignments  RFC 5736192.0.2.0/24          TEST-NET-1                 RFC 5737192.88.99.0/24        6to4 Relay Anycast         RFC 3068192.168.0.0/16        Private-Use Networks       RFC 1918198.18.0.0/15         Network Interconnect                      Device Benchmark Testing   RFC 2544198.51.100.0/24       TEST-NET-2                 RFC 5737203.0.113.0/24        TEST-NET-3                 RFC 5737224.0.0.0/4           Multicast                  RFC 3171240.0.0.0/4           Reserved for Future Use    RFC 1112, Section 4255.255.255.255/32    Limited Broadcast          RFC 919, Section 7                                                 RFC 922, Section 7

Same inIpTables syntax

• Get stack trace:kill -SIGUSR1 <pid>, get trace and stop:kill -6 <pid>
• Get CPU profiling: add--pprof flagrungo tool pprof -png http://127.0.0.1:6060/debug/pprof/profile\?seconds\=20 > cpu.png
• Get RAM profiling: add--pprof flagrungo tool pprof -inuse_space -png http://127.0.0.1:6060/debug/pprof/heap > mem.png

🔬 Detailed explanation ishere.

Docker uses user erigon with UID/GID 1000 (for security reasons). You can see this user being created in the Dockerfile.Can fix by giving a host's user ownership of the folder, where the host's user UID/GID is the same as the docker's userUID/GID (1000).More detailsinpost

https://github.com/mathMakesArt/Erigon-on-RPi-4

The main discussions are happening on our Discord server. To get an invite, send an email totg [at] torquem.ch withyour name, occupation, a brief explanation of why you want to join the Discord, and how you heard about Erigon.

Send an email tosecurity [at] torquem.ch.

Core contributors (in alphabetical order of first names):

• Alex Sharov (AskAlexSharov)

• Alexey Akhunov (@realLedgerwatch)

• Andrea Lanfranchi(@AndreaLanfranchi)

• Andrew Ashikhmin (yperbasis)

• Artem Vorotnikov (vorot93)

• Boris Petrov (b00ris)

• Eugene Danilenko (JekaMas)

• Igor Mandrigin (@mandrigin)

• Giulio Rebuffo (Giulio2002)

• Thomas Jay Rush (@tjayrush)

Thanks to:

• All contributors of Erigon

• All contributors of Go-Ethereum

• Our special respect and gratitude is to the core team ofGo-Ethereum. Keepup the great job!

Happy testing! 🥤

Erigon's internal DB (MDBX) usingMemoryMap - when OS does manage allread, write, cache operations instead ofApplication(linux,windows)

htop on columnres shows memory of "App + OS used to hold page cache for given App", but it's not informative,because ifhtop says that app using 90% of memory you still can run 3 more instances of app on the same machine -because most of that90% is "OS pages cache".OS automatically frees this cache any time it needs memory. Smaller "page cache size" may not impact performance ofErigon at all.

Next tools show correct memory usage of Erigon:

• vmmap -summary PID | grep -i "Physical footprint". Withoutgrep you can see details
  • section MALLOC ZONE column Resident Size shows App memory usage,section REGION TYPE column Resident Sizeshows OS pages cache size.
• Prometheus dashboard shows memory of Go app without OS pages cache (make prometheus, open inbrowserlocalhost:3000, credentialsadmin/admin)
• cat /proc/<PID>/smaps

Erigon uses ~4Gb of RAM during genesis sync and ~1Gb during normal work. OS pages cache can utilize unlimited amount ofmemory.

Warning: Multiple instances of Erigon on same machine will touch Disk concurrently, it impacts performance - one ofmain Erigon optimisations: "reduce Disk random access"."Blocks Execution stage" still does many random reads - this is reason why it's slowest stage. We do not recommendrunningmultiple genesis syncs on same Disk. If genesis sync passed, then it's fine to run multiple Erigon instances on sameDisk.

Please readerigontech#1516 (comment)In short: network-disks are bad for blocks execution - because blocks execution reading data from db non-parallelnon-batched way.

For example: btrfs's autodefrag option - may increase write IO 100x times

Gnome Tracker - detecting miners and kill them.

For anyone else that was getting the BuildKit error when trying to start Erigon the old way you can use the below...

XDG_DATA_HOME=/preferred/data/folder DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 COMPOSE_DOCKER_CLI_BUILD=1 make docker-compose