Join Testnet

Tip

See the node-binary repo for information on the mainnet, including the correct version of the binaries to use and details about the genesis file.

Warning

You need to install bnbchaind before you go further

Minimum System Requirements

The hardware must meet certain requirements to run a Full Node.

  • Desktop or laptop hardware running recent versions of Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.
  • 500 GB of free disk space, accessible at a minimum read/write speed of 100 MB/s.
  • 4 cores of CPU and 8 gigabytes of memory (RAM).
  • A broadband Internet connection with upload/download speeds of at least 1 megabyte per second
  • Your full node has to run at least 4 hours per 24 hours in order to catch up with Binance Chain More hours will be better, run your node continuously for best results.

Setting Up a New Node

You can skip this part if you have executed the install script.

First you need to choose a home folder $BNCHOME (i.e. ~/.bnbchaind) for Binance Chain. You can setup this by:

mkdir ~/.bnbchaind
mkdir ~/.bnbchaind/config
Then, download app.toml and config.toml from node-binary/fullnode/{network}/{version}/config/ into $BNCHOME/config

You can edit this moniker later, in the ~/.gaiad/config/config.toml file: 

# A custom human readable name for this node
moniker = "<your_custom_moniker>"

Note Monikers can contain only ASCII characters. Using Unicode characters will render your node unreachable. :::

Now your Full Node has been initialized!

Genesis & Seeds

Download the Genesis File

Fetch the testnet's genesis.json file into node-binary's config directory. 

cd -p $HOME/.bnbchaind/config
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/binance-chain/node-binary/master/fullnode/testnet/0.6.3-hotfix/config/genesis.json
Note we use the latest directory in the node-binary repo which contains details for the testnet like the latest version and the genesis file.

::: tip If you want to understand genesis file, click here :::

To verify the correctness of the configuration run: 

bnbchaind start &

If you encounter any issue when runing a Full Node, you should read the FAQ provided here.

Add Seed Nodes

Your Full Node needs to know how to find peers in the blockchain network. You'll need to add healthy seed nodes to $HOME/.bnbchain/config/config.toml. The recommended config.toml already contains links to some seed nodes.

If those seeds aren't working, you can find more seeds and persistent peers in the HTTP API endpoints: https://testnet-dex.binance.org/api/v1/peers

Additional Configuration

  • Sync type: by default, new nodes will sync with state-sync mode. To change sync mode, read the instructions here
  • Log: The log file is under home- the directory specified when starting bnbchaind. The latest log file is bnc.log. The process will create a new log file every one hour. To make sure you have sufficient disk space to keep the log files, we strongly recommend you to change the log location by changing logFileRoot option in $BNCHOME/config/app.toml.
  • Service Port: RPC service listens on port 27147 and P2P service listens on port 27146 by default. Make sure these two ports are open before starting a full node, unless the full node has to listen on other ports.
  • Store: All the state and block data will store under $BNCHOME/data, do not delete or edit any of these files.

Get Extra Information From Your Fullnode

If you have a Full Node running, then you can publish extra messages to local files.

Monitor Syncing Process

You can verify if state sync is done by curl localhost:27147/status several times and see whether latest_block_height is increasing in response.

"sync_info": {
  ...
  "latest_block_height": "878092",
  "latest_block_time": "2019-04-15T00:01:22.610803768Z",
  ...
}

Prometheus Metrics

Prometheus is enabled on port 28660 by default, and the endpoint is /metrics.