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Run a Blox SSV node.

eth-docker supports running a Blox SSV node, together with a consensus client and execution client of choice. This is expected to work with Geth, Besu and Nethermind, but not Erigon as of 1/10/2022. It's been tested with Lighthouse, Teku and Nimbus, and should work with Prysm. I recommend not using Prysm because it has close to a supermajority of validators, which carries risk for node operators as well as the chain.

Setup Prerequisites​

Get eth-docker​

  • Clone this tool
    • git clone https://github.com/eth2-educators/eth-docker.git ssv-node && cd ssv-node

On Linux​

  • Install docker, unless you already have it
    • Run ./ethd install

On MacOS​

  • Install Docker Desktop and allocate 16 GiB of RAM and around 1.5TB of storage to it
  • Install pre-requisites via homebrew
    • brew install coreutils newt

Setup an SSV Node​

Run ./ethd config, make sure to choose Prater testnet and Blox SSV Node, choose your preferred consensus and execution clients, and rapid sync for the consensus client. Choose Grafana for visibility.

Get the key for the SSV node and write it down somewhere safe: ./ethd cmd run --rm ssv-generate-keys

Now put that key into the config file: cp blox-ssv-config-sample.yaml blox-ssv-config.yaml followed by nano blox-ssv-config.yaml and set the OperatorPrivateKey: to the value you were shown for the secret key sk, without quotes or curly braces.

Finally, start everything with ./ethd up.

You can watch logs with ./ethd logs -f ssv2-node.

Right after startup, the ssv-node will fail because it cannot get to http://consensus:5052. This is normal! It will resolve once the consensus client has started and is listening on the REST API port. You can ./ethd logs -f consensus to see it do that.

Mapping ports​

By default, the SSV node uses ports TCP 13,001 and UDP 12,001 for its P2P network with other nodes. These ports need to be reachable from the Internet.

If you need to change the ports, you can do so by changing the SSV_P2P_PORT and SSV_P2P_PORT_UDP variables in .env, and changing the corresponding values in blox-ssv-config.yaml.

If you are running the node in a home network, you'll want to forward these ports, then test the TCP port. As long as the UDP port forward is set up the same way, you expect it to work, as well.

Grafana​

Grafana dashboards are included. Make sure to edit the dashboard, change the variables to ssv2-node and just the non-staging explorer, then "Save" with the checkbox ticked that makes these values the default.

Please see the secure proxy docs if you'd like to run Grafana on a secured https port, rather than insecure 3000.

Updating​

When there is a new version of your execution client, consensus client or of the SSV node, just run ./ethd update inside the ssv-node directory, which will pull fresh images. Then when you are ready, run ./ethd up to start using the new version(s).