Documentation: erigon.gitbook.io Blog: erigon.substack.com Twitter: x.com/ErigonEth
Erigon is an implementation of Ethereum (execution layer with embeddable consensus layer), on the efficiency frontier. Archive Node by default.
- Erigon
- System Requirements
- Usage
- Key features
- FAQ
- Getting in touch
- Known issues
Important defaults: Erigon is an Archive Node by default: use --prune.mode
if need make it smaller (not allowed to
change after first start)
In-depth links are marked by the microscope sign (🔬)
RAM: >=32GB, Golang >= 1.22; GCC 10+ or Clang; On Linux: kernel > v4. 64-bit architecture.
- ArchiveNode Ethereum Mainnet: 2TB (April 2024). FullNode: 1.1TB (June 2024)
- ArchiveNode Gnosis: 1.7TB (March 2024). FullNode: 300GB (June 2024)
- ArchiveNode Polygon Mainnet: 4.1TB (April 2024). FullNode: 2Tb (April 2024)
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. CloudDrives (like gp3): Blocks Execution is slow on cloud-network-drives
🔬 More details on Erigon3 datadir size
🔬 More details on what type of data stored here
Build latest release (this will be suitable for most users just wanting to run a node):
git clone --branch release/<x.xx> --single-branch https://github.com/erigontech/erigon.git
cd erigon
make erigon
./build/bin/erigon
Increase download speed by --torrent.download.rate=20mb
. 🔬
See Downloader docs
Use --datadir
to choose where to store data.
Use --chain=gnosis
for Gnosis Chain, --chain=bor-mainnet
for Polygon Mainnet,
and --chain=amoy
for Polygon Amoy.
For Gnosis Chain you need a Consensus Layer client alongside
Erigon (https://docs.gnosischain.com/category/step--3---run-consensus-client).
Running make help
will list and describe the convenience commands available in the Makefile.
datadir
chaindata # "Recently-updated Latest State", "Recent History", "Recent Blocks"
snapshots # contains `.seg` files - it's old blocks
domain # Latest State
history # Historical values
idx # InvertedIndices: can search/filtering/union/intersect them - to find historical data. like eth_getLogs or trace_transaction
accessors # Additional (generated) indices of history - have "random-touch" read-pattern. They can serve only `Get` requests (no search/filters).
txpool # pending transactions. safe to remove.
nodes # p2p peers. safe to remove.
temp # used to sort data bigger than RAM. can grow to ~100gb. cleaned at startup.
# There is 4 domains: account, storage, code, commitment
If you can afford store datadir on 1 nvme-raid - great. If can't - it's possible to store history on cheap drive.
# place (or ln -s) `datadir` on slow disk. link some sub-folders to fast (low-latency) disk.
# Example: what need link to fast disk to speedup execution
datadir
chaindata # link to fast disk
snapshots
domain # link to fast disk
history
idx
accessors
temp # buffers to sort data >> RAM. sequential-buffered IO - is slow-disk-friendly
# Example: how to speedup history access:
# - go step-by-step - first try store `accessors` on fast disk
# - if speed is not good enough: `idx`
# - if still not enough: `history`
# eth-mainnet - archive - April 2024
du -hsc /erigon/*
6G /erigon/caplin
50G /erigon/chaindata
1.8T /erigon/snapshots
1.9T total
du -hsc /erigon/snapshots/*
100G /erigon/snapshots/accessor
240G /erigon/snapshots/domain
260G /erigon/snapshots/history
410G /erigon/snapshots/idx
1.7T /erigon/snapshots
# bor-mainnet - archive - Jun 2024
du -hsc /erigon/*
160M /erigon/bor
50G /erigon/chaindata
3.7T /erigon/snapshots
3.8T total
du -hsc /erigon/snapshots/*
260G /erigon-data/snapshots/accessor
850G /erigon-data/snapshots/domain
650G /erigon-data/snapshots/history
1.4T /erigon-data/snapshots/idx
4.1T /erigon/snapshots
- Initial sync doesn't re-exec from 0: downloading 99% LatestState and History
- Per-Transaction granularity of history (Erigon2 had per-block). Means:
- Can execute 1 historical transaction - without executing it's block
- If account X change V1->V2->V1 within 1 block (different transactions):
debug_getModifiedAccountsByNumber
return it - Erigon3 doesn't store Logs (aka Receipts) - it always re-executing historical txn (but it's cheaper)
- Validator mode: added.
--internalcl
is enabled by default. to disable use--externalcl
. - Store most of data in immutable files (segments/snapshots):
- can symlink/mount latest state to fast drive and history to cheap drive
chaindata
is less than15gb
. It's ok torm -rf chaindata
. (to prevent grow: recommend--batchSize <= 1G
)
--prune
flags changed: see--prune.mode
(default:archive
, full:full
, EIP-4444:minimal
)- Other changes:
- ExecutionStage included many E2 stages: stage_hash_state, stage_trie, log_index, history_index, trace_index
- Restart doesn't loose much partial progress:
--sync.loop.block.limit=5_000
enabled by default
Flags:
verbosity
log.console.verbosity
(overriding alias forverbosity
)log.json
log.console.json
(alias forlog.json
)log.dir.path
log.dir.prefix
log.dir.verbosity
log.dir.json
In order to log only to the stdout/stderr the --verbosity
(or log.console.verbosity
) flag can be used to supply an
int 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
If you want to change the filename
produced from erigon
you should also set the --log.dir.prefix
flag to an alternate name. The
flag --log.dir.verbosity
is
also 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 flags log.json
or log.console.json
, or for the disk
output --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 by
your own implementation, security.
How to start Erigon's services as separated processes, see in docker-compose.yml.
Each service has own ./cmd/*/README.md
file.
Erigon Blog.
Built-in consensus for Ethereum Mainnet, Sepolia, Holesky, Gnosis.
To use external Consensus Layer: --externalcl
.
If you would like to give Erigon a try: a good option is to start syncing one of the public testnets, Holesky (or Amoy). It syncs much quicker, and does not take so much disk space:
git clone https://github.com/erigontech/erigon.git
cd erigon
make erigon
./build/bin/erigon --datadir=<your_datadir> --chain=holesky --prune.mode=full
Please note the --datadir
option that allows you to store Erigon files in a non-default location. Name of the
directory --datadir
does not have to match the name of the chain in --chain
.
Block production is fully supported for Ethereum & Gnosis Chain. It is still experimental for Polygon.
You can set Erigon flags through a TOML configuration file with the flag --config
. The flags set in the
configuration file can be overwritten by writing the flags directly on Erigon command line
./build/bin/erigon --config ./config.toml --chain=sepolia
Assuming we have chain : "mainnet"
in our configuration file, by adding --chain=sepolia
allows the overwrite of the
flag inside of the toml configuration file and sets the chain to sepolia
datadir = 'your datadir'
port = 1111
chain = "mainnet"
http = true
"private.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>
where <CL host>
is your source host or any
.
In order to establish a secure connection between the Consensus Layer and the Execution Layer, a JWT secret key is automatically generated.
The JWT secret key will be present in the datadir by default under the name of jwt.hex
and its path can be specified
with 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 found here.
Once Erigon is running, you need to point your CL client to <erigon address>:8551
,
where <erigon address>
is either localhost
or the IP address of the device running Erigon, and also point to the JWT
secret path created by Erigon.
Caplin is a full-fledged validating Consensus Client like Prysm, Lighthouse, Teku, Nimbus and Lodestar. Its goal is:
- provide better stability
- Validation of the chain
- Stay in sync
- keep the execution of blocks on chain tip
- serve the Beacon API using a fast and compact data model alongside low CPU and memory usage.
The main reason why developed a new Consensus Layer is to experiment with the possible benefits that could come with it. For example, The Engine API does not work well with Erigon. The Engine API sends data one block at a time, which does not suit how Erigon works. Erigon is designed to handle many blocks simultaneously and needs to sort and process data efficiently. Therefore, it would be better for Erigon to handle the blocks independently instead of relying on the Engine API.
Caplin is be enabled by default. to disable it and enable the Engine API, use the --externalcl
flag. from that point
on, an external Consensus Layer will not be need
anymore.
Caplin also has an archivial mode for historical states and blocks. it can be enabled through the --caplin.archive
flag.
In order to enable the caplin's Beacon API, the flag --beacon.api=<namespaces>
must be added.
e.g: --beacon.api=beacon,builder,config,debug,node,validator,lighthouse
will enable all endpoints. **NOTE: Caplin is
not staking-ready so aggregation endpoints are still to be implemented. Additionally enabling the Beacon API will lead
to a 6 GB higher RAM usage.
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
# sepolia
./build/bin/erigon --datadir="<your_sepolia_data_path>" --chain=sepolia --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 is DEV_CHAIN.
On good network bandwidth EthereumMainnet FullNode syncs in 3 hours: OtterSync can sync
Flat KV storage. Erigon uses a key-value database and storing accounts and storage in a simple way.
🔬 See our detailed DB walkthrough here.
Preprocessing. For some operations, Erigon uses temporary files to preprocess data before inserting it into the main DB. That reduces write amplification and DB inserts are orders of magnitude quicker.
🔬 See our detailed ETL explanation here.
Plain state
Single accounts/state trie. Erigon uses a single Merkle trie for both accounts and the storage.
Most of Erigon's components (txpool, rpcdaemon, snapshots downloader, sentry, ...) can work inside Erigon and as independent process on same Server (or another Server). Example:
make erigon rpcdaemon
./build/bin/erigon --datadir=/my --http=false
# To run RPCDaemon as separated process: use same `--datadir` as Erigon
./build/bin/rpcdaemon --datadir=/my --http.api=eth,erigon,web3,net,debug,trace,txpool --ws
- Supported JSON-RPC calls: eth, debug, net, web3
- increase throughput by:
--rpc.batch.concurrency
,--rpc.batch.limit
,--db.read.concurrency
- increase throughput by disabling:
--http.compression
,--ws.compression
🔬 See RPC-Daemon docs
docker compose up prometheus grafana
, detailed docs.
# please use git branch name (or commit hash). don't use git tags
go mod edit -replace github.com/erigontech/erigon-lib=github.com/erigontech/erigon/erigon-lib@5498f854e44df5c8f0804ff4f0747c0dec3caad5
go get github.com/erigontech/erigon@main
go mod tidy
Component | Port | Protocol | Purpose | Should Expose |
---|---|---|---|---|
engine | 9090 | TCP | gRPC Server | Private |
engine | 42069 | TCP & UDP | Snap sync (Bittorrent) | Public |
engine | 8551 | TCP | Engine API (JWT auth) | Private |
sentry | 30303 | TCP & UDP | eth/68 peering | Public |
sentry | 30304 | TCP & UDP | eth/67 peering | Public |
sentry | 9091 | TCP | incoming gRPC Connections | Private |
rpcdaemon | 8545 | TCP | HTTP & WebSockets & GraphQL | Private |
Typically, 30303 and 30304 are exposed to the internet to allow incoming peering connections. 9090 is exposed only internally for rpcdaemon or other connections, (e.g. rpcdaemon -> erigon). Port 8551 (JWT authenticated) is exposed only internally for Engine API JSON-RPC queries from the Consensus Layer node.
Component | Port | Protocol | Purpose | Should Expose |
---|---|---|---|---|
sentinel | 4000 | UDP | Peering | Public |
sentinel | 4001 | TCP | Peering | Public |
In order to configure the ports, use:
--caplin.discovery.addr value Address for Caplin DISCV5 protocol (default: "127.0.0.1")
--caplin.discovery.port value Port for Caplin DISCV5 protocol (default: 4000)
--caplin.discovery.tcpport value TCP Port for Caplin DISCV5 protocol (default: 4001)
Component | Port | Protocol | Purpose | Should Expose |
---|---|---|---|---|
REST | 5555 | TCP | REST | Public |
Component | Port | Protocol | Purpose | Should Expose |
---|---|---|---|---|
all | 6060 | TCP | pprof | Private |
all | 6061 | TCP | metrics | Private |
Optional flags can be enabled that enable pprof or metrics (or both). 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 3.2.1.3
10.0.0.0/8 Private-Use Networks RFC 1918
100.64.0.0/10 Carrier-Grade NAT (CGN) RFC 6598, Section 7
127.16.0.0/12 Private-Use Networks RFC 1918
169.254.0.0/16 Link Local RFC 3927
172.16.0.0/12 Private-Use Networks RFC 1918
192.0.0.0/24 IETF Protocol Assignments RFC 5736
192.0.2.0/24 TEST-NET-1 RFC 5737
192.88.99.0/24 6to4 Relay Anycast RFC 3068
192.168.0.0/16 Private-Use Networks RFC 1918
198.18.0.0/15 Network Interconnect
Device Benchmark Testing RFC 2544
198.51.100.0/24 TEST-NET-2 RFC 5737
203.0.113.0/24 TEST-NET-3 RFC 5737
224.0.0.0/4 Multicast RFC 3171
240.0.0.0/4 Reserved for Future Use RFC 1112, Section 4
255.255.255.255/32 Limited Broadcast RFC 919, Section 7
RFC 922, Section 7
Same in IpTables syntax
Running erigon from build/bin
as a separate user might produce an error:
error while loading shared libraries: libsilkworm_capi.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
The library needs to be installed for another user using make DIST=<path> install
. You could use $HOME/erigon
or /opt/erigon
as the installation path, for example:
make DIST=/opt/erigon install
- Get stack trace:
kill -SIGUSR1 <pid>
, get trace and stop:kill -6 <pid>
- Get CPU profiling: add
--pprof
flag and run
go tool pprof -png http://127.0.0.1:6060/debug/pprof/profile\?seconds\=20 > cpu.png
- Get RAM profiling: add
--pprof
flag and run
go tool pprof -inuse_space -png http://127.0.0.1:6060/debug/pprof/heap > mem.png
🔬 Detailed explanation is here.
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 user UID/GID (1000). More details in post
--txpool.nolocals=true
- don't add
admin
in--http.api
list --http.corsdomain="*"
is bad-practice: set exact hostname or IP- protect from DOS by reducing:
--rpc.batch.concurrency
,--rpc.batch.limit
https://github.com/mathMakesArt/Erigon-on-RPi-4
Docker allows for building and running Erigon via containers. This alleviates the need for installing build dependencies onto 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 following make
targets are available.
# create "erigon" user
make user_linux
# or
make user_macos
There is a .env.example
file in the root of the repo.
DOCKER_UID
- The UID of the docker userDOCKER_GID
- The GID of the docker userXDG_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 for XDG_DATA_HOME
is to use the ~erigon/.ethereum
directory created by helper
targets make user_linux
or make user_macos
.
Check permissions: In all cases, XDG_DATA_HOME
(specified or default) must be writeable by the user UID/GID in docker,
which will be determined by the DOCKER_UID
and DOCKER_GID
at build time. If a build or service startup is failing
due to permissions, check that all the directories, UID, and GID controlled by these 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=erigon
sudo -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 erigon and rpcdaemon which is required to open Erigon's DB from another process (RPCDaemon local-mode). See: https://github.com/erigontech/erigon/pull/2392/files
If your docker installation requires the docker daemon to run as root (which is by default), you will need to prefix
the command above with sudo
. However, it is sometimes recommended running docker (and therefore its containers) as a
non-root user for security reasons. For more information about how to do this, refer to
this article.
- on BorMainnet may help:
--sync.loop.block.limit=10_000
- on cloud-drives (good throughput, bad latency) - can enable OS's brain to pre-fetch:
SNAPSHOT_MADV_RND=false
- can lock latest state in RAM - to prevent from eviction (node may face high historical RPC traffic without impacting Chain-Tip perf):
vmtouch -vdlw /mnt/erigon/snapshots/domain/*bt
ls /mnt/erigon/snapshots/domain/*.kv | parallel vmtouch -vdlw
# if it failing with "can't allocate memory", try:
sync && sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=3
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/compact_memory
Windows users may run erigon in 3 possible ways:
-
Build executable binaries natively for Windows using provided
wmake.ps1
PowerShell script. Usage syntax is the same asmake
command so you have to run.\wmake.ps1 [-target] <targetname>
. Example:.\wmake.ps1 erigon
builds erigon executable. All binaries are placed in.\build\bin\
subfolder. There are some requirements for a successful native build on windows :- Git for Windows must be installed. If you're cloning this repository is very likely you already have it
- GO Programming Language must be installed. Minimum required version is 1.22
- GNU CC Compiler at least version 13 (is highly suggested that you install
chocolatey
package manager - see following point) - If you need to build MDBX tools (i.e.
.\wmake.ps1 db-tools
) then Chocolatey package manager for Windows must be installed. By Chocolatey you need to install the following components :cmake
,make
,mingw
bychoco install cmake make mingw
. Make sure Windows System "Path" variable has: C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\mingw\tools\install\mingw64\bin
Important note about Anti-Viruses During MinGW's compiler detection phase some temporary executables are generated to test compiler capabilities. It's been reported some anti-virus programs detect those files as possibly infected by
Win64/Kryptic.CIS
trojan horse (or a variant of it). Although those are false positives we have no control over 100+ vendors of security products for Windows and their respective detection algorithms and we understand this might make your experience with Windows builds uncomfortable. To workaround the issue you might either set exclusions for your antivirus specifically forbuild\bin\mdbx\CMakeFiles
sub-folder of the cloned repo or you can run erigon using the following other two options -
Use Docker : see docker-compose.yml
-
Use WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) strictly on version 2. Under this option you can build Erigon just as you would 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 fact those mount points useDrvFS
which is a network file system and, 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 as Remote DB even if it is executed on the very same computer. If instead your data is hosted on the native Linux filesystem non limitations apply. Please also note the default WSL2 environment has its own IP address which does not match the one of the network interface of Windows host: take this into account when configuring NAT for port 30303 on your router.
The main discussions are happening on our Discord server. To get an invite, send an email to bloxster [at] proton.me
with your name, occupation, a brief explanation of why you want to join the Discord, and how you heard about Erigon.
Send an email to security [at] torquem.ch
.
Erigon's internal DB (MDBX) using MemoryMap
- when OS does manage all read, write, cache
operations instead of
Application
(linux
, windows)
htop
on column res
shows memory of "App + OS used to hold page cache for given App", but it's not informative,
because if htop
says that app using 90% of memory you still can run 3 more instances of app on the same machine -
because most of that 90%
is "OS pages cache".
OS automatically frees this cache any time it needs memory. Smaller "page cache size" may not impact performance of
Erigon at all.
Next tools show correct memory usage of Erigon:
vmmap -summary PID | grep -i "Physical footprint"
. Withoutgrep
you can see detailssection MALLOC ZONE column Resident Size
shows App memory usage,section REGION TYPE column Resident Size
shows OS pages cache size.
Prometheus
dashboard shows memory of Go app without OS pages cache (make prometheus
, open in browserlocalhost: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 of memory.
Warning: Multiple instances of Erigon on same machine will touch Disk concurrently, it impacts performance - one of main 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 recommend running multiple genesis syncs on same Disk. If genesis sync passed, then it's fine to run multiple Erigon instances on same Disk.
(Like gp3)
You may read: #1516 (comment)
In short: network-disks are bad for blocks execution - because blocks execution reading data from db non-parallel
non-batched way.
Tricks: if you throw anough RAM and set env variable ERIGON_SNAPSHOT_MADV_RND=false
- then Erigon will work
good-enough on Cloud drives - in cost of higher IO.
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