ETH 2.0 - Beacon Node

Eth 2.0 Clients

There are multiple Eth2 clients with working implementations. This guide will focus on installing Lighthouse, but be sure to research the other clients and promote Eth2 client diversity.

Dev Team

Sigma Prime

Consensys

Prysmatic Labs

Status

Focus

Speed, security

Enterprise

Usability, reliability

Lightweight

Language

Rust

Java

Nim

Eth2 || Beacon Node || Installation

Install Rust:

If you don't already have curl installed, you'll need to use:

sudo apt install curl

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

NOTE: The installation will stop half way through. Press 1 thenEnter to finish installation

Install other required packages:

sudo apt install -y git gcc g++ make cmake pkg-config libssl-dev

Change directory to `/home`:

cd ~

Clone Lighthouse repository using `git`:

git clone https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse.git

Log Out / Log In

Rust modifies the PATH variable, so you need to log out and back in to prevent a command not found error during the next step.

After logging back in, enter Lighthouse directory:

cd ~/lighthouse

Use make to compile the binary:

make

Depending on hardware, this may take ~15 minutes. Good time for a break.

If you encounter any errors while compiling, head to the Ligthouse Discord. The developers of Lighthouse are very knowledgeable and always happy to help!

Eth2 || Beacon Node || Systemd File

Create `lighthousebeacon` user:

sudo useradd --no-create-home --shell /bin/false lighthousebeacon

Create `/lighthouse/beacon` directory:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/lighthouse/beacon

Change ownership of `/lighthouse/beacon` :

sudo chown -R lighthousebeacon:lighthousebeacon /var/lib/lighthouse/beacon

Copy Lighthouse binaries into `/usr/local/bin`:

sudo cp /$HOME/.cargo/bin/lighthouse /usr/local/bin

Create `lighthousebeacon.service`:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/lighthousebeacon.service

Paste the following into the file:

[Unit] Description=Lighthouse Beacon Node Wants=network-online.target After=network-online.target [Service] Type=simple User=lighthousebeacon Group=lighthousebeacon Restart=always RestartSec=5 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/lighthouse beacon_node --datadir /var/lib/lighthouse --network prater --staking --eth1-endpoints http://127.0.0.1:8545 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

The file should look like this:

Use Ctrl + X to exit, Y to save, then Enter to confirm.

Below is a description of the command found in the "ExecStart" line:

/usr/local/bin/lighthouse beacon_node - starts the beacon_node
--datadir /var/lib/lighthouse/beacon-node - data directory for Eth2 beacon node
--network prater - connect to prater testnet
--staking - enables the HTTP server for validator communication
--eth1-endpoints http://127.0.0.1:8545 - Location of ETH1 node

Reload the system daemon:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Eth2 || Beacon || Run

Start `lighthousebeacon.service`:

sudo systemctl start lighthousebeacon

Check `lighthousebeacon.service` output:

sudo journalctl -f -u lighthousebeacon.service

This shows running journal entries created by lighthousebeacon.service . You can use Ctrl + C to close the window, but the program will continue running in the background.

Use sudo systemctl stop lighthousebeacon if you'd like to stop the service.