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How to Run A Fullnode on BNB Smart Chain

Fullnodes Functions

  • Stores the full blockchain history on disk and can answer the data request from the network.
  • Receives and validates the new blocks and transactions.
  • Verifies the states of every account.

Supported Platforms

We support running a full node on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows.

Suggested Requirements

  • VPS running recent versions of Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows.
  • IMPORTANT 2 TB of free disk space, solid-state drive(SSD), gp3, 8k IOPS, 250 MB/S throughput, read latency <1ms. (if node is started with snap sync, it will need NVMe SSD)
  • 16 cores of CPU and 64 GB of memory (RAM)
  • Suggest m5zn.3xlarge instance type on AWS, c2-standard-16 on Google cloud.
  • A broadband Internet connection with upload/download speeds of 5 MB/S

Steps to Run a Fullnode

  1. Download the pre-build binaries from the release page or follow the instructions below
# Linux
wget   $(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/bnb-chain/bsc/releases/latest |grep browser_ |grep geth_linux |cut -d\" -f4)
mv geth_linux geth
chmod -v u+x geth

# MacOS
wget   $(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/bnb-chain/bsc/releases/latest |grep browser_ |grep geth_mac |cut -d\" -f4)
mv geth_mac geth
chmod -v u+x geth
  1. Download the config files

Download genesis.json and config.toml by:

wget   $(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/bnb-chain/bsc/releases/latest |grep browser_ |grep mainnet |cut -d\" -f4)
unzip mainnet.zip
  1. Download snapshot

Download latest chaindata snapshot from here. Follow the guide to structure your files.

note

Your --datadir flag should point to the extracted chaindata folder path

  1. Start a full node
./geth --config ./config.toml --datadir ./node  --cache 8000 --rpc.allow-unprotected-txs --txlookuplimit 0
note

Make sure you use the version of geth you downloaded with wget above, and not your local installation of geth, which might be the wrong version.

tip

It is recommended to run a fast node, which is a full node with the flag --tries-verify-mode none set if you want high performance and care little about state consistency. Check here for full details on running a fast node.

./geth --config ./config.toml --datadir ./node  --cache 8000 --rpc.allow-unprotected-txs --txlookuplimit 0 --tries-verify-mode none
  1. Monitor node status

You can monitor the log from ./node/bsc.log by default. When your node has started syncing, you should be able to see the following output:

t=2022-09-08T13:00:27+0000 lvl=info msg="Imported new chain segment"             blocks=1    txs=177   mgas=17.317   elapsed=31.131ms    mgasps=556.259  number=21,153,429 hash=0x42e6b54ba7106387f0650defc62c9ace3160b427702dab7bd1c5abb83a32d8db dirty="0.00 B"
t=2022-09-08T13:00:29+0000 lvl=info msg="Imported new chain segment"             blocks=1    txs=251   mgas=39.638   elapsed=68.827ms    mgasps=575.900  number=21,153,430 hash=0xa3397b273b31b013e43487689782f20c03f47525b4cd4107c1715af45a88796e dirty="0.00 B"
t=2022-09-08T13:00:33+0000 lvl=info msg="Imported new chain segment"             blocks=1    txs=197   mgas=19.364   elapsed=34.663ms    mgasps=558.632  number=21,153,431 hash=0x0c7872b698f28cb5c36a8a3e1e315b1d31bda6109b15467a9735a12380e2ad14 dirty="0.00 B"
note

To sync from genesis block, you would need a more powerful hardware. Server should at least have 40k IOPS and be at least an i3/i3en series server.

  1. Write genesis state locally
./geth --datadir node init genesis.json

You could see the following output:

INFO [05-19|14:53:17.468] Allocated cache and file handles         database=/Users/huangsuyu/Downloads/bsc/node/geth/chaindata cache=16.00MiB handles=16
INFO [05-19|14:53:17.498] Writing custom genesis block
INFO [05-19|14:53:17.501] Persisted trie from memory database      nodes=21 size=56.84KiB time=357.915µs gcnodes=0 gcsize=0.00B gctime=0s livenodes=1 livesize=-574.00B
INFO [05-19|14:53:17.502] Successfully wrote genesis state         database=chaindata hash=7d79cc…fb0d1e
INFO [05-19|14:53:17.503] Allocated cache and file handles         database=/Users/huangsuyu/Downloads/bsc/node/geth/lightchaindata cache=16.00MiB handles=16
INFO [05-19|14:53:17.524] Writing custom genesis block
INFO [05-19|14:53:17.525] Persisted trie from memory database      nodes=21 size=56.84KiB time=638.396µs gcnodes=0 gcsize=0.00B gctime=0s livenodes=1 livesize=-574.00B
INFO [05-19|14:53:17.528] Successfully wrote genesis state         database=lightchaindata hash=7d79cc…fb0d1e
  1. Start fullnode
## start a full node
./geth --config ./config.toml --datadir ./node  --cache 8000 --rpc.allow-unprotected-txs --txlookuplimit 0

Sync Mode

There are two sync modes for running a full node: snap and full which can be specified by flag --syncmode.

The snap sync mode is used for initial sync, which will download the latest states rather than execute the blocks from the genesis. When the initial sync is done, it will switch to full sync automatically.

The full sync mode can also be used to do initial sync, which will execute all the blocks since genesis. But it is not recommended, since the amount of historical data is too large. Instead, you can download a snapshot from the official repo and start full sync from the snapshot.

If the flag --syncmode is not provided, the default sync mode will depend on the state of the data folder. It will be snap mode if you sync from genesis or full mode if you start from a snapshot.

Local Private Network

Please refer to BSC-Deploy Tools to setup a local private network.

Node Maintenance

Please read this guide

Upgrade Geth

Please read this guide