About Goerli/Prater fork

Goerli/Prater hardfork is the last test before the mainnet upgrade known as The Merge that is schedule for the second week of August 2022.

We are supporting this fork by including config files and Systemd services along with the mainnet clients packages. Execution Layer clients run on the Goerli testnet and Consensus clients on Prater.

What’s included

  • Goerli/Prater configuration: Goerli/Prater config files and Systemd services

  • Execution Layer clients: Geth, Nethermind and Besu

  • Consensus Layer clients: Lighthouse, Prysm, Nimbus and Teku

The image includes all Consensus Layer clients and Execution Layer binaries ready to run through Systemd services and all necessary tools to make a deposit in the staking contract and generate the keys to enable a Validator.

Installation

Packages are already included in the mainnet clients so you need to install an Ethereum on ARM image for your device or update your mainnet clients if you already have an Ethereum on ARM node running. Please se the section Download and install

Warning

Please check here the recommended-hardware section as you need to comply with some requirements for the installer to work such as an USB-SSD Disk.

Tip

Remember that you will need to forward/open the following ports for the clients to work as expected:

  • 30303: For the Execution Layer clients

  • 9000: For Consensus Layer clients except Prysm (Lighthouse, Nimbus)

  • 12000 (UDP) & 13000 (TCP): for Consensus Layer Prysm

Goerli/Prater configuration

The network configuration depends upon merge-config package. It contains all necessary files to provide info to the Execution and Consensus clients. Particularly, it creates the jwtsecret file which EC and CL use to communicate. The config files are located on /etc/ethereum/.

Quick start guide

If you already have an Ethereum on ARM image installed you can update your clients with the apt-get commnand. In order to update all Execution and Consensus Clients, run:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install geth besu nethermind lighthouse prysm teku nimbus

If you installed a fresh image, everything is ready.

Note

For Lighthouse and Prysm you will need to start an additional service to run a Validator. We’ll get to that in the “Enabling a Validator” section

In it important to remark that you will need to run both Execution and Consensus Layer clients at the same time in order to run an Ethereum node after The Merge. This means that we need 2 Systemd services for every EL+CL combination (and 3 if you are running a validator with Lighthouse or Prysm).

Starting the clients

As said, in order to get ready for the Goerli/Prater merge you need to start 2 clients, an Execution Layer and a Consensus Layer. For instance, for starting Geth and Lighthouse, run:

sudo systemctl start geth-goerli
sudo systemctl start lighthouse-beacon-prater

To access the logs, use journalctl for each service, for instance:

sudo journalctl -u geth -f
sudo journalctl -u lighthouse-beacon-prater -f

For stopping a client, use the Systemctl stop directive.

Note

All config files are located in the /etc/ethereum/ with the goerli suffix for EL clients and prater suffix for CL clients.

Note

Please note that Consensus clients (except Nimbus) are configured to use the CheckPoint sync so they will get in sync very quickly.

Enabling a Validator

Coming Soon.