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Run Teku as a Bootnode

What is a Bootnode?​

Any new node joining the Ethereum network needs to be able to talk to other Ethereum nodes in the same network.

Ethereum uses the Discovery protocol to find new nodes.

The Discovery process starts with a small set of nodes, known as Bootnodes, that are already coded into the Ethereum clients.

You can also specify other nodes as your initial list of bootnodes using the option p2p-discovery-bootnodes.

note

Any Teku running as a Beacon Node is already acting running the Discovery protocol and can be used as a bootnode.

Running Teku in Bootnode-only mode​

You can run Teku in bootnode-only mode if you do not want to have a full beacon node running.

When running in bootnode-only mode, Teku will only enable its Discovery service.

In bootnode-only mode, Teku can't:

  • Synchronize with the chain.

  • Validate or produce blocks.

  • Respond to Beacon API queries.

To run Teku in bootnode-only mode, start Teku with the subcommand bootnode:

teku bootnode <extra_options>

Here is an example of common options used for a mainnet bootnode:

teku bootnode \
  --network="mainnet" \
  --p2p-port=9000 \
  --p2p-advertised-ip=116.250.191.71 \
  --p2p-private-key-file=/opt/data/node-key.txt

In the example above, we are setting the bootnode to the Mainnet network, and specifying the IP and Port used for external communication with other nodes using --p2p-port and --p2p-advertised-ip options.

We are also setting the node key to always use the same key using the option --p2p-private-key-file. This is important to ensure our bootnode will have a stable ENR that we can share with other users so they can communicate with our bootnode.