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Run a Taiko node

This guide will walk you through the process of operating a Taiko node via simple-taiko-node. You will be able to:

  • Run a Taiko node easily from the command line on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
  • View a Grafana dashboard which displays the node's status.

Prerequisites​

  • Docker is installed and running.
  • Git is installed.
  • Consult the Geth minimum hardware requirements, but ignore the storage requirement as Taiko nodes will require less storage. Around 50GB should be more than enough initially, but over time it could become insufficient as the chain grows. As of 2023-06-21T16:59:11+00:00 a Taiko node sync takes 17.3 GB.

System Requirements​

RequirementMinimumRecommended
CPUCPU with 2+ coresFast CPU with 4+ cores
RAM4GB RAM16GB+ RAM
Storage Space1TB free storage space to sync the MainnetHigh-performance SSD with at least 1TB of free space
Internet Speed8 MBit/sec download Internet service25+ MBit/sec download Internet service

Instalation​

git clone https://github.com/taikoxyz/simple-taiko-node.git
cd simple-taiko-node

Configure your node (required)​

To run a Grimsvotn L2 node:

cp .env.sample .env

To run a Eldfell L3 node:

cp .env.sample.l3 .env.l3

We will refer to .env.l3 as .env for the purpose of this guide.

Next, open the .env file in your preferred text editor:

nano .env

Then, configure your base layer endpoint. This would be a Sepolia L1 RPC to run a Grimsvotn L2 node, and a Grimsvotn L2 RPC to run an Eldfell L3 node.

tip

You can get a base layer endpoint from a few places, but it must point to an archive node to access the state trie beyond the last 128 blocks.

Recommended: Run your own Sepolia archive node, see: Run a Sepolia node. This is recommended because you will eventually be rate-limited by public RPC providers. If you are running an Elfell L3 node, you will need to have a fully synced Grimsvotn L2 node.

Alternative: Alchemy and Infura are two popular RPC providers. Make sure you select the RPC as Sepolia testnet, and not Ethereum mainnet.

If you are running a local Sepolia node, you cannot reference the L1 endpoints as http://127.0.0.1:8545 and ws://127.0.0.1:8546because that is local to inside the simple-taiko-node Docker image. Depending on your firewall setup, you can do a few things. You can try:

  • Using host.docker.internal see: Details
  • Using the local IP address of your machine (use something like `ip addr show` to get the IP address)
Finally, set the following environment variables:
  • L1_ENDPOINT_HTTP
  • L1_ENDPOINT_WS

Enable your node as a proposer (optional)​

See enable a proposer for more information.

Enable your node as a prover (optional)​

See enable a prover for more information

Start a Node​

info

Keep in mind that for a Grimsvotn L2 node you will use docker compose for all commands, and for an Eldfell L3 node you will use docker compose -f ./docker-compose.l3.yml --env-file .env.l3 for all commands.

Make sure Docker is running and then run the following command to start the node. If you want to run it in the background, please add the -d flag (docker compose up -d).

For a Grimsvotn L2 node:

docker compose up

For a Eldfell L3 node:

docker compose -f ./docker-compose.l3.yml --env-file .env.l3 up

To run the node in the background (detached mode), use the -d flag:

docker compose up -d

Stop a node​

This command shuts down the node, but will keep all volumes, so next time you restart the node, it won't need to synchronize from the genesis again.

docker compose down

Remove a Node​

danger

You will remove this node from your machine, do it with your own risk

These commands will completely remove the node by removing all volumes used by each container:

docker compose down -v
rm -f .env

Update a node​

Update the simple-taiko-node Docker images:

docker compose pull

View the node's logs​

To view the Docker logs, the following commands can be ran:

View all L2 logs​

docker compose logs -f

View the L2 proposer image's logs​

docker compose logs -f taiko_client_proposer

View the L2 prover image's logs​

docker compose logs -f taiko_client_prover_relayer

View the L2 execution engine logs​

docker compose logs -f l2_execution_engine

View all L3 logs​

docker compose -f docker-compose.l3.yml logs -f

View the L3 proposer image's logs​

docker compose -f docker-compose.l3.yml logs -f l3_taiko_client_proposer

View the L3 prover image's logs​

docker compose -f docker-compose.l3.yml logs -f l3_taiko_client_prover_relayer

View the L3 execution engine logs​

docker compose -f docker-compose.l3.yml logs -f l3_execution_engine

View the live data streams of your running containers​

This shows the CPU/MEM USAGE % and consumption of your machine's resources (add prefix "docker stats -a" to display all containers)

docker stats

View the node's status dashboard​

A Grafana dashboard with a Prometheus datasource is also included to display the L2 execution engine's real time status.

You can visit it at http://localhost:3000/d/L2ExecutionEngine/l2-execution-engine-overview.