Boot nodes¶
Boot nodes help new nodes discover peers. They are lightweight nodes that speak the P2P discovery protocol but do not need to store chain state or produce blocks.
Bitgold nodes can start without a hand-maintained StaticNodes list: leave StaticNodes empty and remove the BootstrapNodes field from config.toml so the node uses the defaults shipped with the release.
Joining the network¶
In config.toml:
...
[Node.P2P]
MaxPeers = 200
NoDiscovery = false
StaticNodes = []
ListenAddr = ":30311"
...
Older configurations that list StaticNodes still work, but the official static-node list may change over time. Prefer the defaults built into current releases.
Boot node addresses
The current boot node enode:// addresses ship with each Bitgold release and are maintained by the Bitgold team. Use the defaults from your release rather than copying addresses from older documentation.
Running a boot node¶
Boot nodes are lightweight: 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM, and about 20 GB of disk are enough for a small deployment. If you want to support the Bitgold ecosystem by operating a public boot node, contact the Bitgold team through the official channels on www.bitgold.network so that your node can be added to the published list.
Run a node as a boot node by keeping peer discovery enabled and avoiding block production:
./geth --config ./config.toml --datadir <datadir> \
--cache 1024 --maxpeers 200 --nodiscover=false