Ethereum

Set up your Ethereum Mainnet or Goerli Testnet RPC node

Prerequisites

• Setup your Axelar validator
• Minimum hardware requirements: CPU with 2+ cores, 4GB RAM, 600GB+ free storage space.
• MacOS or Ubuntu 18.04+
• Official Documentation

Steps

1. Install execution client
2. Install consensus layer client
3. Configure systemd
4. Configure vald

Install Execution client

Install an execution client for Ethereum. In this sample guide we will be installing Geth with the built-in launchpad PPAs (Personal Package Archives) on Ubuntu. If you are on different OS, please refer to the official Documentation.

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ethereum

Install a consensus layer client

To sync after the latest merge in Goerli network geth nodes should run a consensus client to be able to keep in sync with the chain. The list of consensus clients can be found in https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/#consensus-clients

Users can opt for any Consensus client. The sample instructions below use Prysm as the Consensus client. Please refer to the Prysm docs for the up-to-date instructions. For fast syncing, consider checkpoint sync instead of genesis sync.

mkdir prysm && cd prysm

# Download installation script
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm/master/prysm.sh --output prysm.sh && chmod +x prysm.sh

# Download the Goerli network genesis file
wget https://github.com/eth-clients/eth2-networks/raw/master/shared/prater/genesis.ssz

# Generate a 32 byte hex secret key for authentication, for e.g.
./prysm.sh beacon-chain generate-auth-secret
# Alternatively, `openssl rand -hex 32 | tr -d "\n" > "jwt.hex"`

# Start Prysm beacon chain.
# NOTE: For Goerli testnet, add `--prater` flag
./prysm.sh beacon-chain --http-web3provider=http://localhost:8551 --jwt-secret=/path/to/jwt.hex --genesis-state=./genesis.ssz

Configure systemd

1. Create systemd service file

After installation of go-ethereum, we are now ready to start the geth process but in order to ensure it is running in the background and auto-restarts in case of a server failure, we will setup a service file with systemd.

Add the following to /etc/systemd/system/geth.service

[Unit]
Description=Ethereum Node
After=network.target

[Service]
User=$USER
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/geth --syncmode "snap" --http --http.api=eth,net,web3,engine --http.vhosts * --http.addr 0.0.0.0 --authrpc.jwtsecret=/path/to/jwt.hex --override.terminaltotaldifficulty 50000000000000000
Restart=on-failure
LimitNOFILE=65535

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

2. Start geth

sudo systemctl enable geth
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start geth

If everything was set-up correctly, your Ethereum node should now be starting the process of synchronization. This will take several hours, depending on your hardware. To check the status of the running service or to follow the logs, you can use:

sudo systemctl status geth
sudo journalctl -u geth -f

3. Verify sync status

To verify if your node is in sync you can check the latest block from the explorer. Compare it with what you have in sudo journalctl -u geth -f

4. Test RPC connection

Alternatively, you can now also use the Geth JavaScript console and check status of your node by attaching to your newly created geth.ipc. Don’t forget to replace $USER and path, depending on your server configuration.

geth attach ipc:/root/.ethereum/geth.ipc
eth.syncing

geth attach ipc:/root/.ethereum/goerli/geth.ipc
eth.syncing

Once your node is fully synced, the output from above will say false. To test your Ethereum RPC node, you can send an RPC request using cURL

curl -X POST http://localhost:8545 \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_syncing","params":[],"id":1}'

If you are testing it remotely, please replace localhost with the IP or URL of your server.

Configure vald

In order for vald to connect to your Ethereum node, your rpc_addr should be exposed in vald’s config.toml

[[axelar_bridge_evm]]
name = "Ethereum"
rpc_addr = "http://IP:PORT"
start-with-bridge = true

[[axelar_bridge_evm]]
name = "ethereum-2"
rpc_addr = "http://IP:PORT"
start-with-bridge = true

Upgrade geth

If new release of geth is out, you can update it via the following. Check that you are on latest version.

geth version

# Upgrade geth if version is outdated
sudo systemctl stop geth
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade geth

# Start you `geth` service and check logs.
sudo systemctl enable geth
sudo systemctl start geth
journalctl -u geth -f -n 100