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Setting Up A Celestia Light Node

This tutorial will guide you through setting up a Celestia Light Node, which can allow you to do data-sampling on the Data Availability (DA) network.

Overview of Light Nodes​

Light nodes (CLN) ensure data availability. This is the most common way to interact with the Celestia network.

Note: In future implementations, Light Nodes can also publish transactions (see ADR), though in Mamaki, transactions are left to Bridge Nodes.

light-node

Light Nodes have the following properties:

  1. Listen for ExtendedHeaders, i.e. wrapped “raw” headers, that notify Celestia Nodes of new block headers and relevant DA metadata.
  2. Perform data availability sampling (DAS) on the received headers

Hardware Requirements​

The following hardware minimum requirements are recommended for running the light node:

  • Memory: 2 GB RAM
  • CPU: Single Core
  • Disk: 5 GB SSD Storage
  • Bandwidth: 56 Kbps for Download/56 Kbps for Upload

Setting Up Your Light Node​

The following tutorial is done on an Ubuntu Linux 20.04 (LTS) x64 instance machine.

Setup The Dependencies​

Follow the tutorial on setting up your dependencies here.

Install Celestia Node​

Note: Make sure that you have at least 5+ Gb of free space for Celestia Light Node

Follow the tutorial on installing Celestia Node here

Initialize the Light Node​

Run the following command:

celestia light init

Start the Light Node​

Start the Light Node with a connection to a validator node's gRPC endpoint (which is usually exposed on port 9090):

NOTE: In order for access to the ability to get/submit state-related information, such as the ability to submit PayForData transactions, or query for the node's account balance, a gRPC endpoint of a validator (core) node must be passed as directed below.

celestia light start --core.grpc http://<ip>:9090

If you need a list of RPC endpoints to connect to, you can check from the list here

You can create your key for your node by following the cel-key instructions here

Once you start the Light Node, a wallet key will be generated for you. You will need to fund that address with Mamaki Testnet tokens to pay for PayForData transactions. You can find the address by running the following command:

./cel-key list --node.type light --keyring-backend test

Mamaki Testnet tokens can be requested here.

Optional: Run the Light Node with a Custom Key​

In order to run a light node using a custom key:

  1. The custom key must exist inside the celestia light node directory at the correct path (default: ~/.celestia-light/keys/keyring-test)
  2. The name of the custom key must be passed upon start, like so:
celestia light start --core.grpc http://<ip>:9090 --keyring.accname <name_of_custom_key>

Optional: Start Light Node with SystemD​

Follow the tutorial on setting up the light node as a background process with SystemD here.

Data Availability Sampling (DAS)​

With your Light Node running, you can check out this tutorial on submitting PayForData transactions here.