erigon

Erigon

Erigon is an implementation of Ethereum (execution layer with embeddable consensus layer), on the efficiency frontier.

• Erigon
• System Requirements
• Sync Times
• Usage
  • Getting Started
  • Datadir structure
  • History on cheap disk
  • Erigon3 datadir size
  • Erigon3 changes from Erigon2
  • Logging
  • Modularity
  • Embedded Consensus Layer
  • Testnets
  • Block Production (PoS Validator)
  • Config Files TOML
  • Beacon Chain (Consensus Layer)
  • Caplin
    • Caplin's Usage
  • Multiple Instances / One Machine
  • Dev Chain
• Key features
  • Faster Initial Sync
  • More Efficient State Storage
  • JSON-RPC daemon
  • Grafana dashboard
• FAQ
  • Use as library
  • Default Ports and Firewalls
    • erigon ports
    • caplin ports
    • beaconAPI ports
    • shared ports
    • other ports
    • Hetzner expecting strict firewall rules
  • Run as a separate user - systemd example
  • Grab diagnostic for bug report
  • Run local devnet
  • Docker permissions error
  • Public RPC
  • RaspberryPI
  • Run all components by docker-compose
    • Optional: Setup dedicated user
    • Environment Variables
    • Run
  • How to change db pagesize
  • Erigon3 perf tricks
  • Windows
• Getting in touch
  • Reporting security issues/concerns

Important defaults: Erigon 3 is a Full Node by default. (Erigon 2 was an Archive Node by default.) Set --prune.mode to "archive" if you need an archive node or to "minimal" if you run a validator on a small disk (not allowed to change after first start).

In-depth links are marked by the microscope sign (🔬)

System Requirements

RAM: >=32GB, Golang >= 1.25; GCC 10+ or Clang; On Linux: kernel > v4. 64-bit architecture.

• ArchiveNode Ethereum Mainnet: 1.6TB (May 2025). FullNode: 1.1TB (May 2025)
• ArchiveNode Gnosis: 640GB (May 2025). FullNode: 300GB (June 2024)
• ArchiveNode Polygon Mainnet: 4.1TB (April 2024). FullNode: 2Tb (April 2024)

SSD or NVMe. We do not recommend HDD — on HDD, Erigon will always stay a few blocks behind the chain tip but will not fall further behind. Bear in mind that SSD performance deteriorates when close to capacity. CloudDrives (like gp3): Blocks Execution is slow on cloud-network-drives

🔬 More details on Erigon3 datadir size

🔬 More details on what type of data stored here

Sync Times

These are the approximate sync times for syncing from scratch to the tip of the chain (results may vary depending on hardware and bandwidth).

Usage

Getting Started

Release Notes and Binaries

Build latest release (this will be suitable for most users just wanting to run a node):

git clone --branch release/<x.xx> --single-branch https://github.com/erigontech/erigon.git
cd erigon
make erigon
./build/bin/erigon

Use --datadir to choose where to store data.

Use --chain=gnosis for Gnosis Chain, --chain=bor-mainnet for Polygon Mainnet, and --chain=amoy for Polygon Amoy. For Gnosis Chain you need a Consensus Layer client alongside Erigon (https://docs.gnosischain.com/category/step--3---run-consensus-client).

Running make help will list and describe the convenience commands available in the Makefile.

Upgrading from 3.0 to 3.1

1. Backup your datadir.
2. Upgrade your Erigon binary.
3. OPTIONAL: Upgrade snapshot files.
   1. Update snapshot file names. To do this either run Erigon 3.1 until the sync stage completes, or run erigon snapshots update-to-new-ver-format --datadir /your/datadir.
   2. Reset your datadir so that Erigon will sync to a newer snapshot. erigon snapshots reset --datadir /your/datadir. See Resetting snapshots for more details.
4. Run Erigon 3.1. Your snapshots file names will be migrated automatically if you didn't do this manually. If you reset your datadir, Erigon will sync to the latest remote snapshots.

Datadir structure

datadir        
    chaindata     # "Recently-updated Latest State", "Recent History", "Recent Blocks"
    snapshots     # contains `.seg` files - it's old blocks
        domain    # Latest State
        history   # Historical values 
        idx       # InvertedIndices: can search/filtering/union/intersect them - to find historical data. like eth_getLogs or trace_transaction
        accessor # Additional (generated) indices of history - have "random-touch" read-pattern. They can serve only `Get` requests (no search/filters).
    txpool        # pending transactions. safe to remove.
    nodes         # p2p peers. safe to remove.
    temp          # used to sort data bigger than RAM. can grow to ~100gb. cleaned at startup.
   
# There is 4 domains: account, storage, code, commitment 

See the lib and cmd READMEs for more information.

History on cheap disk

If you can afford to store the datadir on a single NVMe RAID — great. If you can't, it's possible to store history on a cheaper drive.

# place (or ln -s) `datadir` on slow disk. link some sub-folders to fast (low-latency) disk.
# Example: what need link to fast disk to speedup execution
datadir        
    chaindata   # link to fast disk
    snapshots   
        domain    # link to fast disk
        history   
        idx       
        accessor 
    temp # buffers to sort data >> RAM. sequential-buffered IO - is slow-disk-friendly   

# Example: how to speedup history access: 
#   - go step-by-step - first try store `accessor` on fast disk
#   - if speed is not good enough: `idx`
#   - if still not enough: `history` 

Erigon3 datadir size

# eth-mainnet - archive - Nov 2024

du -hsc /erigon/chaindata
15G 	/erigon/chaindata

du -hsc /erigon/snapshots/* 
120G 	/erigon/snapshots/accessor
300G	/erigon/snapshots/domain
280G	/erigon/snapshots/history
430G	/erigon/snapshots/idx
2.3T	/erigon/snapshots

# bor-mainnet - archive - Nov 2024

du -hsc /erigon/chaindata
20G 	/erigon/chaindata

du -hsc /erigon/snapshots/* 
360G	/erigon-data/snapshots/accessor
1.1T	/erigon-data/snapshots/domain
750G	/erigon-data/snapshots/history
1.5T	/erigon-data/snapshots/idx
4.9T	/erigon/snapshots

Erigon3 changes from Erigon2

• Initial sync doesn't re-exec from 0: downloading 99% LatestState and History
• Per-Transaction granularity of history (Erigon2 had per-block). Means:
  • Can execute 1 historical transaction - without executing it's block
  • If account X change V1->V2->V1 within 1 block (different transactions): debug_getModifiedAccountsByNumber return it
  • Erigon3 doesn't store Logs (aka Receipts) - it always re-executing historical txn (but it's cheaper)
• Validator mode: added. --internalcl is enabled by default. to disable use --externalcl.
• Store most of data in immutable files (segments/snapshots):
  • can symlink/mount latest state to fast drive and history to cheap drive
  • chaindata is less than 15gb. It's ok to rm -rf chaindata. (to prevent grow: recommend --batchSize <= 1G)
• --prune flags changed: see --prune.mode (default: full, archive: archive, EIP-4444: minimal)
• Other changes:
  • ExecutionStage included many E2 stages: stage_hash_state, stage_trie, log_index, history_index, trace_index
  • Restart doesn't loose much partial progress: --sync.loop.block.limit=5_000 enabled by default

Logging

Flags:

• verbosity
• log.console.verbosity (overriding alias for verbosity)
• log.json
• log.console.json (alias for log.json)
• log.dir.path
• log.dir.prefix
• log.dir.verbosity
• log.dir.json
• torrent.verbosity

In order to log only to the stdout/stderr the --verbosity (or log.console.verbosity) flag can be used to supply an int value specifying the highest output log level:

  LvlCrit = 0
  LvlError = 1
  LvlWarn = 2
  LvlInfo = 3
  LvlDebug = 4
  LvlTrace = 5

To set an output dir for logs to be collected on disk, please set --log.dir.path If you want to change the filename produced from erigon you should also set the --log.dir.prefix flag to an alternate name. The flag --log.dir.verbosity is also available to control the verbosity of this logging, with the same int value as above, or the string value e.g. ' debug' or 'info'. Default verbosity is 'debug' (4), for disk logging.

Log format can be set to json by the use of the boolean flags log.json or log.console.json, or for the disk output --log.dir.json.

Torrent client logging

The torrent client in the Downloader logs to logs/torrent.log at the level specified by torrent.verbosity or WARN, whichever is lower. Logs at torrent.verbosity or higher are also passed through to the top level Erigon dir and console loggers (which must have their own levels set low enough to log the messages in their respective handlers).

Resetting snapshots

Erigon 3.1 adds the command erigon snapshots reset. This modifies your datadir so that Erigon will sync to the latest remote snapshots on next run. You must pass --datadir. If the chain cannot be inferred from the chaindata, you must pass --chain. --local=false will prevent locally generated snapshots from also being removed. Pass --dry-run and/or --verbosity=5 for more information.

Modularity

Erigon by default is "all in one binary" solution, but it's possible start TxPool as separated processes. Same true about: JSON RPC layer (RPCDaemon), p2p layer (Sentry), history download layer (Downloader), consensus. Don't start services as separate processes unless you have a clear reason to do so: resource limiting, scaling, replacing with your own implementation, or security. How to start Erigon's services as separated processes, see in docker-compose.yml. Each service has own ./cmd/*/README.md file. Erigon Blog.

Embedded Consensus Layer

Built-in consensus for Ethereum Mainnet, Sepolia, Hoodi, Gnosis, Chiado. To use external Consensus Layer: --externalcl.

Testnets

If you would like to give Erigon a try: a good option is to start syncing one of the public testnets, Hoodi (or Chiado). It syncs much quicker, and does not take so much disk space:

git clone https://github.com/erigontech/erigon.git
cd erigon
make erigon
./build/bin/erigon --datadir=<your_datadir> --chain=hoodi --prune.mode=full

Please note the --datadir option that allows you to store Erigon files in a non-default location. Name of the directory --datadir does not have to match the name of the chain in --chain.

Block Production (PoS Validator)

Block production is fully supported for Ethereum & Gnosis Chain. It is still experimental for Polygon.

Config Files TOML

You can set Erigon flags through a TOML configuration file with the flag --config. The flags set in the configuration file can be overwritten by writing the flags directly on Erigon command line

./build/bin/erigon --config ./config.toml --chain=sepolia

Assuming we have chain : "mainnet" in our configuration file, by adding --chain=sepolia allows the overwrite of the flag inside of the toml configuration file and sets the chain to sepolia

datadir = 'your datadir'
port = 1111
chain = "mainnet"
http = true
"private.api.addr"="localhost:9090"

"http.api" = ["eth","debug","net"]

Beacon Chain (Consensus Layer)

Erigon can be used as an Execution Layer (EL) for Consensus Layer clients (CL). Default configuration is OK.

If your CL client is on a different device, add --authrpc.addr 0.0.0.0 (Engine API listens on localhost by default) as well as --authrpc.vhosts <CL host> where <CL host> is your source host or any.

In order to establish a secure connection between the Consensus Layer and the Execution Layer, a JWT secret key is automatically generated.

The JWT secret key will be present in the datadir by default under the name of jwt.hex and its path can be specified with the flag --authrpc.jwtsecret.

This piece of info needs to be specified in the Consensus Layer as well in order to establish connection successfully. More information can be found here.

Once Erigon is running, you need to point your CL client to <erigon address>:8551, where <erigon address> is either localhost or the IP address of the device running Erigon, and also point to the JWT secret path created by Erigon.

Caplin

Caplin is a full-fledged validating Consensus Client like Prysm, Lighthouse, Teku, Nimbus and Lodestar. Its goal is:

• provide better stability
• Validation of the chain
• Stay in sync
• keep the execution of blocks on chain tip
• serve the Beacon API using a fast and compact data model alongside low CPU and memory usage.

The main reason we developed a new Consensus Layer is to explore the potential benefits it can bring. For example, The Engine API does not work well with Erigon. The Engine API sends data one block at a time, which does not suit how Erigon works. Erigon is designed to handle many blocks simultaneously and needs to sort and process data efficiently. Therefore, it would be better for Erigon to handle the blocks independently instead of relying on the Engine API.

Caplin's Usage

Caplin is enabled by default. To disable it and use the Engine API instead, use the --externalcl flag. From that point on, an external Consensus Layer will no longer be needed.

Caplin also has an archival mode for historical states and blocks. it can be enabled through the --caplin.archive flag. In order to enable the caplin's Beacon API, the flag --beacon.api=<namespaces> must be added. e.g: --beacon.api=beacon,builder,config,debug,node,validator,lighthouse will enable all endpoints. Note: enabling the Beacon API will lead to a 6 GB higher RAM usage

Multiple Instances / One Machine

Define 7 flags to avoid conflicts: --datadir --port --http.port --authrpc.port --torrent.port --private.api.addr --mcp.port. Example of multiple chains on the same machine:

# mainnet
./build/bin/erigon --datadir="<your_mainnet_data_path>" --chain=mainnet --port=30303 --http.port=8545 --authrpc.port=8551 --torrent.port=42069 --private.api.addr=127.0.0.1:9090 --mcp.port=8553 --http --ws --http.api=eth,debug,net,trace,web3,erigon


# sepolia
./build/bin/erigon --datadir="<your_sepolia_data_path>" --chain=sepolia --port=30304 --http.port=8546 --authrpc.port=8552 --torrent.port=42068 --private.api.addr=127.0.0.1:9091 --mcp.port=8554 --http --ws --http.api=eth,debug,net,trace,web3,erigon

Quote your path if it has spaces.

Dev Chain

🔬 Detailed explanation is DEV_CHAIN.

Key features

Faster Initial Sync

On a good network connection, an Ethereum Mainnet Full Node syncs in 3 hours: OtterSync can sync

More Efficient State Storage

Flat KV storage. Erigon uses a key-value database and stores accounts and storage in a straightforward way.

Preprocessing. For some operations, Erigon uses temporary files to preprocess data before inserting it into the main DB. That reduces write amplification and DB inserts are orders of magnitude quicker.

🔬 See our detailed ETL explanation here.

Plain state

Single accounts/state trie. Erigon uses a single Merkle trie for both accounts and the storage.

🔬 Staged Sync Readme

JSON-RPC daemon

Most of Erigon's components (txpool, rpcdaemon, snapshots downloader, sentry, ...) can run inside Erigon or as independent processes on the same server (or a separate server). Example:

make erigon rpcdaemon
./build/bin/erigon --datadir=/my --http=false
# To run RPCDaemon as separated process: use same `--datadir` as Erigon
./build/bin/rpcdaemon --datadir=/my --http.api=eth,erigon,web3,net,debug,trace,txpool --ws

• Supported JSON-RPC calls: eth, debug, net, web3
• increase throughput by: --rpc.batch.concurrency, --rpc.batch.limit, --db.read.concurrency
• increase throughput by disabling: --http.compression, --ws.compression

🔬 See RPC-Daemon docs

Grafana dashboard

docker compose up prometheus grafana, detailed docs.

FAQ

Use as library

# please use git branch name (or commit hash). don't use git tags
go get github.com/erigontech/erigon@main
go mod tidy

Default Ports and Firewalls

erigon ports

Typically, 30303 is exposed to the internet to allow incoming peering connections. 9090 is exposed only internally for rpcdaemon or other connections, (e.g. rpcdaemon -> erigon). Port 8551 (JWT authenticated) is exposed only internally for Engine API JSON-RPC queries from the Consensus Layer node. Port 8553 is the embedded MCP server for AI-assistant integration; it binds to localhost only and should never be exposed publicly. To disable it entirely, pass --mcp.disable.

caplin ports

In order to configure the ports, use:

   --caplin.discovery.addr value                                                    Address for Caplin DISCV5 protocol (default: "127.0.0.1")
   --caplin.discovery.port value                                                    Port for Caplin DISCV5 protocol (default: 4000)
   --caplin.discovery.tcpport value                                                 TCP Port for Caplin DISCV5 protocol (default: 4001)

beaconAPI ports

shared ports

Optional flags can be enabled that enable pprof or metrics (or both). Use --help with the binary for more info.

other ports

Reserved for future use: gRPC ports: 9092 consensus engine, 9093 snapshot downloader, 9094 TxPool

Hetzner expecting strict firewall rules

0.0.0.0/8             "This" Network             RFC 1122, Section 3.2.1.3
10.0.0.0/8            Private-Use Networks       RFC 1918
100.64.0.0/10         Carrier-Grade NAT (CGN)    RFC 6598, Section 7
127.16.0.0/12         Private-Use Networks       RFC 1918
169.254.0.0/16        Link Local                 RFC 3927
172.16.0.0/12         Private-Use Networks       RFC 1918
192.0.0.0/24          IETF Protocol Assignments  RFC 5736
192.0.2.0/24          TEST-NET-1                 RFC 5737
192.88.99.0/24        6to4 Relay Anycast         RFC 3068
192.168.0.0/16        Private-Use Networks       RFC 1918
198.18.0.0/15         Network Interconnect
Device Benchmark Testing   RFC 2544
198.51.100.0/24       TEST-NET-2                 RFC 5737
203.0.113.0/24        TEST-NET-3                 RFC 5737
224.0.0.0/4           Multicast                  RFC 3171
240.0.0.0/4           Reserved for Future Use    RFC 1112, Section 4
255.255.255.255/32    Limited Broadcast          RFC 919, Section 7
RFC 922, Section 7

Same in IpTables syntax

Run as a separate user - systemd example

Running erigon from build/bin as a separate user requires the binaries to be installed using make DIST=<path> install. You could use $HOME/erigon or /opt/erigon as the installation path, for example:

make DIST=/opt/erigon install

Grab diagnostic for bug report

• Get stack trace: kill -SIGUSR1 <pid>, get trace and stop: kill -6 <pid>
• Get CPU profiling: add --pprof flag and run
  go tool pprof -png http://127.0.0.1:6060/debug/pprof/profile\?seconds\=20 > cpu.png
• Get RAM profiling: add --pprof flag and run
  go tool pprof -inuse_space -png http://127.0.0.1:6060/debug/pprof/heap > mem.png

Run local devnet

🔬 Detailed explanation is here.

Docker permissions error

Docker uses user erigon with UID/GID 1000 (for security reasons). You can see this user being created in the Dockerfile. Can fix by giving a host's user ownership of the folder, where the host's user UID/GID is the same as the docker's user UID/GID (1000). More details in post

Public RPC

• --txpool.nolocals=true
• don't add admin in --http.api list
• --http.corsdomain="*" is bad-practice: set exact hostname or IP
• protect from DOS by reducing: --rpc.batch.concurrency, --rpc.batch.limit

Why doesn't my full node have earlier blocks data?

• prune.mode=full no longer downloads pre-merge blocks (see partial history expiry). Now it only stores post-merge blocks data (i.e. blocks and transactions)
• To include pre-merge blocks data, use --prune.mode=blocks (all blocks data + only recent state data) or --prune.mode=archive (all data)

RaspberryPI

https://github.com/mathMakesArt/Erigon-on-RPi-4

Run all components by docker-compose

Docker allows for building and running Erigon via containers. This alleviates the need for installing build dependencies onto the host OS.

Optional: Setup dedicated user

User UID/GID need to be synchronized between the host OS and container so files are written with correct permission.

You may wish to setup a dedicated user/group on the host OS, in which case the following make targets are available.

# create "erigon" user
make user_linux
# or
make user_macos

Environment Variables

There is a .env.example file in the root of the repo.

• DOCKER_UID - The UID of the docker user
• DOCKER_GID - The GID of the docker user
• XDG_DATA_HOME - The data directory which will be mounted to the docker containers

If not specified, the UID/GID will use the current user.

A good choice for XDG_DATA_HOME is to use the ~erigon/.ethereum directory created by helper targets make user_linux or make user_macos.

Run

Check permissions: In all cases, XDG_DATA_HOME (specified or default) must be writable by the user UID/GID in docker, which will be determined by the DOCKER_UID and DOCKER_GID at build time. If a build or service startup is failing due to permissions, check that all the directories, UID, and GID controlled by these environment variables are correct.

Next command starts: Erigon on port 30303, rpcdaemon on port 8545, prometheus on port 9090, and grafana on port 3000.

#
# Will mount ~/.local/share/erigon to /home/erigon/.local/share/erigon inside container
#
make docker-compose

#
# or
#
# if you want to use a custom data directory
# or, if you want to use different uid/gid for a dedicated user
#
# To solve this, pass in the uid/gid parameters into the container.
#
# DOCKER_UID: the user id
# DOCKER_GID: the group id
# XDG_DATA_HOME: the data directory (default: ~/.local/share)
#
# Note: /preferred/data/folder must be read/writeable on host OS by user with UID/GID given
#       if you followed above instructions
#
# Note: uid/gid syntax below will automatically use uid/gid of running user so this syntax
#       is intended to be run via the dedicated user setup earlier
#
DOCKER_UID=$(id -u) DOCKER_GID=$(id -g) XDG_DATA_HOME=/preferred/data/folder DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 COMPOSE_DOCKER_CLI_BUILD=1 make docker-compose

#
# if you want to run the docker, but you are not logged in as the $ERIGON_USER
# then you'll need to adjust the syntax above to grab the correct uid/gid
#
# To run the command via another user, use
#
ERIGON_USER=erigon
sudo -u ${ERIGON_USER} DOCKER_UID=$(id -u ${ERIGON_USER}) DOCKER_GID=$(id -g ${ERIGON_USER}) XDG_DATA_HOME=~${ERIGON_USER}/.ethereum DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 COMPOSE_DOCKER_CLI_BUILD=1 make docker-compose

Makefile creates the initial directories for erigon, prometheus and grafana. The PID namespace is shared between erigon and rpcdaemon which is required to open Erigon's DB from another process (RPCDaemon local-mode). See: https://github.com/erigontech/erigon/pull/2392/files

If your docker installation requires the docker daemon to run as root (which is by default), you will need to prefix the command above with sudo. However, it is sometimes recommended running docker (and therefore its containers) as a non-root user for security reasons. For more information about how to do this, refer to this article.

How to change db pagesize

post

Erigon3 perf tricks

• on BorMainnet may help: --sync.loop.block.limit=10_000
• on cloud-drives (good throughput, bad latency) - can enable OS's brain to pre-fetch: SNAPSHOT_MADV_RND=false
• can lock latest state in RAM - to prevent from eviction (node may face high historical RPC traffic without impacting Chain-Tip perf):

vmtouch -vdlw /mnt/erigon/snapshots/domain/*bt
ls /mnt/erigon/snapshots/domain/*.kv | parallel vmtouch -vdlw

# if it failing with "can't allocate memory", try: 
sync && sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=3
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/compact_memory

Windows

Windows users may run erigon in 3 possible ways:

• Build executable binaries natively for Windows using make. Example: make erigon builds the erigon executable. All binaries are placed in .\build\bin\ subfolder. There are some requirements for a successful native build on windows :

  • Git for Windows must be installed (provides bash and MSYS2 environment). If you're cloning this repository is very likely you already have it
  • GO Programming Language must be installed. Minimum required version is 1.25
    • Chocolatey package manager for Windows must be installed. Then install the required build tools: choco install cmake make mingw (provides GNU CC Compiler >= 13, GNU Make, and CMake). Make sure Windows System "Path" variable has: C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\mingw\tools\install\mingw64\bin

  Important note about Anti-Viruses During MinGW's compiler detection phase some temporary executables are generated to test compiler capabilities. It's been reported some anti-virus programs detect those files as possibly infected by Win64/Kryptic.CIS trojan horse (or a variant of it). Although those are false positives we have no control over 100+ vendors of security products for Windows and their respective detection algorithms and we understand this might make your experience with Windows builds uncomfortable. To workaround the issue you might either set exclusions for your antivirus specifically for build\bin\mdbx\CMakeFiles sub-folder of the cloned repo or you can run erigon using the following other two options

• Use Docker : see docker-compose.yml

• Use WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) strictly on version 2. Under this option you can build Erigon just as you would on a regular Linux distribution. You can point your data also to any of the mounted Windows partitions ( eg. /mnt/c/[...], /mnt/d/[...] etc) but in such case be advised performance is impacted: this is due to the fact those mount points use DrvFS which is a network file system and, additionally, MDBX locks the db for exclusive access which implies only one process at a time can access data. This has consequences on the running of rpcdaemon which has to be configured as Remote DB even if it is executed on the very same computer. If instead your data is hosted on the native Linux filesystem non limitations apply. Please also note the default WSL2 environment has its own IP address which does not match the one of the network interface of Windows host: take this into account when configuring NAT for port 30303 on your router.

Getting in touch

Reporting security issues/concerns

Send an email to security [at] torquem.ch.