Lighthouse - 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.

	Lighthouse	Teku	Prysm	Nimbus
Dev Team	Sigma Prime	Consensys	Prysmatic Labs	Status
Focus	Speed, security	Enterprise	Usability, reliability	Lightweight
Language	Rust	Java	Go	Nim

Eth2 || Beacon Node || Installation

Install Rust:

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

Clone Lighthouse repository using git:

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

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.

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 --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.

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.

Eth 2.0 || Beacon Node || Sync

Congratulations! The Beacon Node is now syncing to the Eth2 Beacon Chain!