Golang execution layer implementation of the Ethereum protocol.
Automated builds are available for stable releases and the unstable master branch. Binary archives are published at https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/.
For prerequisites and detailed build instructions please read the Installation Instructions.
Building geth requires both a Go (version 1.21 or later) and a C compiler. You can install
them using your favourite package manager. Once the dependencies are installed, run
make gethor, to build the full suite of utilities:
make allThe go-ethereum project comes with several wrappers/executables found in the cmd
directory.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
geth |
Our main Ethereum CLI client. It is the entry point into the Ethereum network (main-, test- or private net), capable of running as a full node (default), archive node (retaining all historical state) or a light node (retrieving data live). It can be used by other processes as a gateway into the Ethereum network via JSON RPC endpoints exposed on top of HTTP, WebSocket and/or IPC transports. geth --help and the CLI page for command line options. |
clef |
Stand-alone signing tool, which can be used as a backend signer for geth. |
devp2p |
Utilities to interact with nodes on the networking layer, without running a full blockchain. |
abigen |
Source code generator to convert Ethereum contract definitions into easy-to-use, compile-time type-safe Go packages. It operates on plain Ethereum contract ABIs with expanded functionality if the contract bytecode is also available. However, it also accepts Solidity source files, making development much more streamlined. Please see our Native DApps page for details. |
bootnode |
Stripped down version of our Ethereum client implementation that only takes part in the network node discovery protocol, but does not run any of the higher level application protocols. It can be used as a lightweight bootstrap node to aid in finding peers in private networks. |
evm |
Developer utility version of the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) that is capable of running bytecode snippets within a configurable environment and execution mode. Its purpose is to allow isolated, fine-grained debugging of EVM opcodes (e.g. evm --code 60ff60ff --debug run). |
rlpdump |
Developer utility tool to convert binary RLP (Recursive Length Prefix) dumps (data encoding used by the Ethereum protocol both network as well as consensus wise) to user-friendlier hierarchical representation (e.g. rlpdump --hex CE0183FFFFFFC4C304050583616263). |
Going through all the possible command line flags is out of scope here (please consult our
CLI Wiki page),
but we've enumerated a few common parameter combos to get you up to speed quickly
on how you can run your own geth instance.
Minimum:
- CPU with 2+ cores
- 4GB RAM
- 1TB free storage space to sync the Mainnet
- 8 MBit/sec download Internet service
Recommended:
- Fast CPU with 4+ cores
- 16GB+ RAM
- High-performance SSD with at least 1TB of free space
- 25+ MBit/sec download Internet service
By far the most common scenario is people wanting to simply interact with the Ethereum network: create accounts; transfer funds; deploy and interact with contracts. For this particular use case, the user doesn't care about years-old historical data, so we can sync quickly to the current state of the network. To do so:
$ geth consoleThis command will:
- Start
gethin snap sync mode (default, can be changed with the--syncmodeflag), causing it to download more data in exchange for avoiding processing the entire history of the Ethereum network, which is very CPU intensive. - Start the built-in interactive JavaScript console,
(via the trailing
consolesubcommand) through which you can interact usingweb3methods (note: theweb3version bundled withingethis very old, and not up to date with official docs), as well asgeth's own management APIs. This tool is optional and if you leave it out you can always attach it to an already runninggethinstance withgeth attach.
Transitioning towards developers, if you'd like to play around with creating Ethereum contracts, you almost certainly would like to do that without any real money involved until you get the hang of the entire system. In other words, instead of attaching to the main network, you want to join the test network with your node, which is fully equivalent to the main network, but with play-Ether only.
$ geth --goerli consoleThe console subcommand has the same meaning as above and is equally
useful on the testnet too.
Specifying the --goerli flag, however, will reconfigure your geth instance a bit:
- Instead of connecting to the main Ethereum network, the client will connect to the Görli test network, which uses different P2P bootnodes, different network IDs and genesis states.
- Instead of using the default data directory (
~/.ethereumon Linux for example),gethwill nest itself one level deeper into agoerlisubfolder (~/.ethereum/goerlion Linux). Note, on OSX and Linux this also means that attaching to a running testnet node requires the use of a custom endpoint sincegeth attachwill try to attach to a production node endpoint by default, e.g.,geth attach <datadir>/goerli/geth.ipc. Windows users are not affected by this.
Note: Although some internal protective measures prevent transactions from
crossing over between the main network and test network, you should always
use separate accounts for play and real money. Unless you manually move
accounts, geth will by default correctly separate the two networks and will not make any
accounts available between them.
As an alternative to passing the numerous flags to the geth binary, you can also pass a
configuration file via:
$ geth --config /path/to/your_config.tomlTo get an idea of how the file should look like you can use the dumpconfig subcommand to
export your existing configuration:
$ geth --your-favourite-flags dumpconfigNote: This works only with geth v1.6.0 and above.
One of the quickest ways to get Ethereum up and running on your machine is by using Docker:
docker run -d --name ethereum-node -v /Users/alice/ethereum:/root \
-p 8545:8545 -p 30303:30303 \
ethereum/client-goThis will start geth in snap-sync mode with a DB memory allowance of 1GB, as the
above command does. It will also create a persistent volume in your home directory for
saving your blockchain as well as map the default ports. There is also an alpine tag
available for a slim version of the image.
Do not forget --http.addr 0.0.0.0, if you want to access RPC from other containers
and/or hosts. By default, geth binds to the local interface and RPC endpoints are not
accessible from the outside.
As a developer, sooner rather than later you'll want to start interacting with geth and the
Ethereum network via your own programs and not manually through the console. To aid
this, geth has built-in support for a JSON-RPC based APIs (standard APIs
and geth specific APIs).
These can be exposed via HTTP, WebSockets and IPC (UNIX sockets on UNIX based
platforms, and named pipes on Windows).
The IPC interface is enabled by default and exposes all the APIs supported by geth,
whereas the HTTP and WS interfaces need to manually be enabled and only expose a
subset of APIs due to security reasons. These can be turned on/off and configured as
you'd expect.
HTTP based JSON-RPC API options:
--httpEnable the HTTP-RPC server--http.addrHTTP-RPC server listening interface (default:localhost)--http.portHTTP-RPC server listening port (default:8545)--http.apiAPI's offered over the HTTP-RPC interface (default:eth,net,web3)--http.corsdomainComma separated list of domains from which to accept cross origin requests (browser enforced)--wsEnable the WS-RPC server--ws.addrWS-RPC server listening interface (default:localhost)--ws.portWS-RPC server listening port (default:8546)--ws.apiAPI's offered over the WS-RPC interface (default:eth,net,web3)--ws.originsOrigins from which to accept WebSocket requests--ipcdisableDisable the IPC-RPC server--ipcapiAPI's offered over the IPC-RPC interface (default:admin,debug,eth,miner,net,personal,txpool,web3)--ipcpathFilename for IPC socket/pipe within the datadir (explicit paths escape it)
You'll need to use your own programming environments' capabilities (libraries, tools, etc) to
connect via HTTP, WS or IPC to a geth node configured with the above flags and you'll
need to speak JSON-RPC on all transports. You
can reuse the same connection for multiple requests!
Note: Please understand the security implications of opening up an HTTP/WS based transport before doing so! Hackers on the internet are actively trying to subvert Ethereum nodes with exposed APIs! Further, all browser tabs can access locally running web servers, so malicious web pages could try to subvert locally available APIs!
Maintaining your own private network is more involved as a lot of configurations taken for granted in the official networks need to be manually set up.
First, you'll need to create the genesis state of your networks, which all nodes need to be
aware of and agree upon. This consists of a small JSON file (e.g. call it genesis.json):
{
"config": {
"chainId": <arbitrary positive integer>,
"homesteadBlock": 0,
"eip150Block": 0,
"eip155Block": 0,
"eip158Block": 0,
"byzantiumBlock": 0,
"constantinopleBlock": 0,
"petersburgBlock": 0,
"istanbulBlock": 0,
"berlinBlock": 0,
"londonBlock": 0
},
"alloc": {},
"coinbase": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"difficulty": "0x20000",
"extraData": "",
"gasLimit": "0x2fefd8",
"nonce": "0x0000000000000042",
"mixhash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"parentHash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"timestamp": "0x00"
}The above fields should be fine for most purposes, although we'd recommend changing
the nonce to some random value so you prevent unknown remote nodes from being able
to connect to you. If you'd like to pre-fund some accounts for easier testing, create
the accounts and populate the alloc field with their addresses.
"alloc": {
"0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000001": {
"balance": "111111111"
},
"0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000002": {
"balance": "222222222"
}
}With the genesis state defined in the above JSON file, you'll need to initialize every
geth node with it prior to starting it up to ensure all blockchain parameters are correctly
set:
$ geth init path/to/genesis.jsonWith all nodes that you want to run initialized to the desired genesis state, you'll need to start a bootstrap node that others can use to find each other in your network and/or over the internet. The clean way is to configure and run a dedicated bootnode:
$ bootnode --genkey=boot.key
$ bootnode --nodekey=boot.keyWith the bootnode online, it will display an enode URL
that other nodes can use to connect to it and exchange peer information. Make sure to
replace the displayed IP address information (most probably [::]) with your externally
accessible IP to get the actual enode URL.
Note: You could also use a full-fledged geth node as a bootnode, but it's the less
recommended way.
With the bootnode operational and externally reachable (you can try
telnet <ip> <port> to ensure it's indeed reachable), start every subsequent geth
node pointed to the bootnode for peer discovery via the --bootnodes flag. It will
probably also be desirable to keep the data directory of your private network separated, so
do also specify a custom --datadir flag.
$ geth --datadir=path/to/custom/data/folder --bootnodes=<bootnode-enode-url-from-above>Note: Since your network will be completely cut off from the main and test networks, you'll also need to configure a miner to process transactions and create new blocks for you.
In a private network setting a single CPU miner instance is more than enough for
practical purposes as it can produce a stable stream of blocks at the correct intervals
without needing heavy resources (consider running on a single thread, no need for multiple
ones either). To start a geth instance for mining, run it with all your usual flags, extended
by:
$ geth <usual-flags> --mine --miner.threads=1 --miner.etherbase=0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000Which will start mining blocks and transactions on a single CPU thread, crediting all
proceedings to the account specified by --miner.etherbase. You can further tune the mining
by changing the default gas limit blocks converge to (--miner.targetgaslimit) and the price
transactions are accepted at (--miner.gasprice).
Thank you for considering helping out with the source code! We welcome contributions from anyone on the internet, and are grateful for even the smallest of fixes!
If you'd like to contribute to go-ethereum, please fork, fix, commit and send a pull request for the maintainers to review and merge into the main code base. If you wish to submit more complex changes though, please check up with the core devs first on our Discord Server to ensure those changes are in line with the general philosophy of the project and/or get some early feedback which can make both your efforts much lighter as well as our review and merge procedures quick and simple.
Please make sure your contributions adhere to our coding guidelines:
- Code must adhere to the official Go formatting guidelines (i.e. uses gofmt).
- Code must be documented adhering to the official Go commentary guidelines.
- Pull requests need to be based on and opened against the
masterbranch. - Commit messages should be prefixed with the package(s) they modify.
- E.g. "eth, rpc: make trace configs optional"
Please see the Developers' Guide for more details on configuring your environment, managing project dependencies, and testing procedures.
For contributions to the go-ethereum website, please checkout and raise pull requests against the website branch.
For more detailed instructions please see the website branch README or the
contributing page of the website.
The go-ethereum library (i.e. all code outside of the cmd directory) is licensed under the
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0,
also included in our repository in the COPYING.LESSER file.
The go-ethereum binaries (i.e. all code inside of the cmd directory) are licensed under the
GNU General Public License v3.0, also
included in our repository in the COPYING file.
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