System Requirements

Elrond Nodes explained

Nodes are computers running the Elrond software, so they contribute to the Elrond network by relaying information and validating it. Each node needs to stake 2500 EGLD to become a Validator and is rewarded for its service. Nodes without a stake are called Observers - they are connected to the network and relay information, but they have no role in processing transactions and thus do not earn rewards.

Minimum System Requirements for running 1 Elrond Node

• 4 x dedicated/physical CPUs, either Intel or AMD, with the SSE4.1 and SSE4.2 flags (use lscpu to verify)
• 8 GB RAM
• 200 GB SSD
• 100 Mbit/s always-on internet connection, at least 4 TB/month data plan
• Linux OS (Ubuntu 20.04 recommended) / MacOS

tip

Support for ARM processors (e.g. for Raspberry Pi) will come in the future, pending third-party issues.

warning

If the system chosen to host the node is a VPS, the host should have dedicated CPUs. This is mandatory. Using shared CPUs can hinder your node's performance that will result in a decrease of node's rating and eventually the node might get jailed.

tip

We are promoting using processors that support the fma or fma3 instruction set since it is widely used by our VM. Displaying the available CPU instruction set can be done using the Linux shell command sudo lshw

warning

In case a decision to run multiple Elrond Nodes on the same machine is chosen, the host running those nodes should have at least the minimum system requirements multiplied by the number of nodes running on that host.

Networking

In order for a node to be reachable by other nodes several conditions have to be met:

1. The port opened by the node on the interfaces must not be blocked by a firewall that denies inbound connections on it
2. If behind a NAT device, the node must be able to use the UPnP protocol to successfully negotiate a port that the NAT device will forward the incoming connections to (in other words, the router should be UPnP compatible)
3. There must be maximum 1 NAT device between the node and the Internet at large. Otherwise, the node will not be reachable by other nodes, even if it can connect itself to them.

To make sure the required ports are open, use the following command before continuing:

sudo ufw allow 37373:38383/tcp

note

The above ports need to be open in order to allow the node to communicate with other nodes via p2p. The configuration for the port range is set here.

warning

In case a firewall for outgoing traffic is used please make sure traffic to ports 10000 (p2p seeder) as well as 123 (NTP) is explicitly allowed.