Running a Lighthouse client for GBC

This document describes how to run Lighthouse beacon node + Lighthouse validator for the Gnosis Beacon Chain.

See a similar repo with Prysm node setup - https://github.com/gnosischain/prysm-launch

Important Note

We were not able to run the latest version of Lighthouse with our config. It was necessary to patch mainnet config in the beacon client and rebuild it from source. Patched source code is available at https://github.com/gnosischain/gbc-lighthouse.

Assumptions

This document assumes that you already have an xDai node available for your use (or public JSON RPC endpoint)
You have already generated your validator accounts using the fork of the official deposit-cli - https://github.com/gnosischain/deposit-cli. You will need validator keystores and passwords for them to run the validator client.
You might start your node and validator first, and only them make a deposit, once everything works.
You have a persistent linux VM with docker installed on it, which is accessible from the public internet via a fixed IP address. We recommend using a VM with at least 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB SSD

Configuration

Create an empty directory somewhere on the VM (e.g. /root/gbc)
Clone the repository with all necessary configs:

cd /root/gbc
git clone https://github.com/gnosischain/lighthouse-launch .

Copy all validators keystore files to the ./keys/validator_keys directory. Ensure that copied keystores are only used on a single VM instance.
Write keystore password to the ./keys/keystore_password.txt file
Create .env file from the example at .env.example. Put the valid external IP address of your VM and xDAI RPC url in the config. Other values can be left without changes.
(Optional) Create ./config/graffiti_file.txt from the example at ./config/graffiti_file.txt.example. Update with your prefered default graffiti and any validator specific graffiti values you'd like.

If it is required to send the node and validator logs to a remote syslog server the following actions can be done (it is assumed that the node and validator will be run by using the docker-compose-syslog.yml file with the docker-compose command in the instructions below).

Copy ./syslog/etc/logrotate.d/docker-logs to /etc/logrotate.d/.
Copy ./syslog/etc/rsyslog.d/30-gbc-local.conf and ./syslog/etc/rsyslog.d/35-gbc-remote-logging.conf to /etc/rsyslog.d/.
Modify target and port in /etc/rsyslog.d/35-gbc-remote-logging.conf to point to a remote syslog server.
Restart the rsyslog service by systemctl restart rsyslog.

Import of validator keys

Run the following command to import and all added keystore files:

docker-compose up validator-import

Running node

Run the following command to start the beacon node:

docker-compose up -d node
docker-compose logs -f node

If you would like to run a slasher together with your node, you can run the following commands instead:

docker-compose up -d node-private-slasher
docker-compose logs -f node-private-slasher

This will run a node with the historical slasher db for private use only, meaning that found slashings will NOT be broadcasted to other peers.

Alternatively, if you want to broadcast found slashings to other peers, (e.g. if you do not plan to run validators, or want to contribute to network health):

docker-compose up -d node-public-slasher
docker-compose logs -f node-public-slasher

Your node should find other peers and start syncing with the rest of the network

Running validator

Run the following command to start the validator client:

docker-compose up -d validator
docker-compose logs -f validator