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Run a Testnet Taiko Node From Source

This tutorial explains how to run an Taiko node for our testnet Hekla from source code.

Building the Source Code

Please follow the Building a Node from Source guide before continuing. This guide presumes you have built the required images already (taiko-geth and taiko-client).

Hardware Requirements

These are the recommended specs of a mainnet Geth node; the actual requirements may be lower.

  • 16GB RAM
  • 2TB SSD
  • Quad-core CPU

Node operators should plan for future storage needs as the requirements will grow continuously.

Create a JWT Secret

taiko-geth and taiko-client communicate over the standard Ethereum engine API authrpc. This communication is secured using a shared secret.

You will need to generate a shared secret in the form of a 32 byte hex string.

Terminal window
openssl rand -hex 32 > jwt.txt

Start taiko-geth

It’s generally better to start taiko-geth before you start taiko-client as you will encounter less error messages.

taiko-geth can be started without taiko-client and will wait until taiko-client begins communicating.

  1. Navigate to your taiko-geth directory

    Find the directory where you built the taiko-geth binary.

  2. Copy the JWT secret you generated into the taiko-geth directory.

    Terminal window
    cp /path/to/jwt.txt .

  3. Start taiko-geth

    Use the following command to start taiko-geth in a default configuration. The JSON-RPC API will become available on port 28545.

    Terminal window
        ./build/bin/geth \
            --taiko \
            --networkid 167009 \
            --gcmode archive \
            --datadir ./data/taiko-geth \
            --metrics \
            --metrics.expensive \
            --metrics.addr "0.0.0.0" \
            --bootnodes enode://2f7ee605f84362671e7d7c6d47b69a3358b0d87e9ba4648befcae8b19453275ed19059db347c459384c1a3e5486419233c06bf6c4c6f489d81ace6f301a2a446@43.153.55.134:30303,enode://c067356146268d2855ad356c1ce36ba9f78c1633a72f9b7f686679c2ffe04bab6d24e48ef6eefb0e01aa00dff5024f7f94bc583da90b6027f40be4129bbbc5fd@43.153.90.191:30303,enode://acc2bdb6416feddff9734bee1e6de91e684e9df5aeb1d36698cc78b920600aed36a2871e4ad0cf4521afcdc2cde8e2cd410a57038767c356d4ce6c69b9107a5a@170.106.109.12:30303,enode://eb5079aae185d5d8afa01bfd2d349da5b476609aced2b57c90142556cf0ee4a152bcdd724627a7de97adfc2a68af5742a8f58781366e6a857d4bde98de6fe986@34.66.210.65:30303,enode://2294f526cbb7faa778192289c252307420532191438ce821d3c50232e019a797bda8c8f8541de0847e953bb03096123856935e32294de9814d15d120131499ba@34.72.186.213:30303 \
            --authrpc.addr "0.0.0.0" \
            --authrpc.port 28551 \
            --authrpc.vhosts "*" \
            --authrpc.jwtsecret ./jwt.txt \
            --http \
            --http.api admin,debug,eth,net,web3,txpool,miner,taiko \
            --http.addr "0.0.0.0" \
            --http.port 28545 \
            --http.vhosts "*" \
            --ws \
            --ws.api admin,debug,eth,net,web3,txpool,miner,taiko \
            --ws.addr "0.0.0.0" \
            --ws.port 28546 \
            --ws.origins "*" \
            --gpo.ignoreprice "100000000" \
            --port 30304 \
            --syncmode full \
            --state.scheme=path

Start taiko-client

This guide assumes you are running both taiko-geth and taiko-client on the same machine.

If you aren’t, you can configure the ports and addresses so that the services can access each other.

  1. Navigate to your taiko-client directory

    Find the directory where you built the taiko-client binary.

  2. Copy the JWT secret

    Terminal window
    cp /path/to/jwt.txt .

  3. Set environment variables

    The following URLs should be a Holesky node.

    You will need either an RPC provider, or run a full Holesky node yourself.

    Terminal window
    export L1_WS=...  # the WS address for the node to sync from.
    export L1_BEACON_URL=... # URL address for the L1 Beacon-node HTTP endpoint to use.

  4. Start taiko-client

    Use the following command to start taiko-client in a default configuration.

    You can find all other configurable flags by running ./bin/taiko-client driver.

    This command assumes you’ve run the taiko-geth command as is, if you’ve changed ports please change them accordingly.

    Terminal window
        ./bin/taiko-client driver \
            --l1.ws ${L1_WS} \
            --l1.beacon ${L1_BEACON_URL} \
            --l2.ws ws://localhost:28546 \
            --taikoL1 0x79C9109b764609df928d16fC4a91e9081F7e87DB \
            --taikoL2 0x1670090000000000000000000000000000010001 \
            --jwtSecret ./jwt.txt \
            --l2.auth http://localhost:28551/ \
            --verbosity 3 \
            --p2p.sync \
            --p2p.checkPointSyncUrl https://rpc.hekla.taiko.xyz

Syncing

Once you’ve started taiko-geth and taiko-client properly you should see them communicate with each other and start syncing.

Syncing can take several hours, depending on the size of the chain.

Next Steps