Node Performance

This guide provides recommendations for hardware, client software, and configuration settings to optimize the performance of your Base node.

Hardware

Running a performant Base node requires adequate hardware. We recommend the following minimum specifications:

1. A modern multi-core CPU with good single-core performance.
2. At least 32 GB RAM (64 GB recommended).
3. A locally attached NVMe SSD drive. RAID 0 configurations can improve performance.
4. Sufficient storage capacity calculated as: (2 * [current chain size](https://base.org/stats) + [snapshot size](https://basechaindata.vercel.app) + 20% buffer). This accounts for chain data growth and snapshot restoration space.

Production Hardware Examples

The following are the hardware specifications used for Base production nodes:

• Geth Full Node:
  • Instance: AWS i4i.12xlarge
  • Storage: RAID 0 of all local NVMe drives (/dev/nvme*)
  • Filesystem: ext4
• Reth Archive Node:
  • Instance: AWS i4ie.6xlarge
  • Storage: RAID 0 of all local NVMe drives (/dev/nvme*)
  • Filesystem: ext4

Initial Sync

Using a recent snapshot can significantly reduce the time required for the initial node synchronization process.

Client Software

The Base Node repository contains the current stable configurations and instructions for running different client implementations.

Supported Clients

Reth is currently the most performant client for running Base nodes. Future optimizations will primarily focus on Reth. You can read more about the migration to Reth here.

Geth Performance Tuning

Geth Cache Settings

For Geth nodes, tuning cache allocation via environment variables can improve performance. These settings are used in the standard Docker configuration:

# .env.mainnet / .env.sepolia
GETH_CACHE="20480" # Total P2P cache memory allowance (MB) (default: 1024)
GETH_CACHE_DATABASE="20" # Percentage of cache memory allowance for database io (default: 75)
GETH_CACHE_GC="12" # Percentage of cache memory allowance for garbage collection (default: 25)
GETH_CACHE_SNAPSHOT="24" # Percentage of cache memory allowance for snapshot caching (default: 10)
GETH_CACHE_TRIE="44" # Percentage of cache memory allowance for trie caching (default: 25)

Geth LevelDB Tuning

For teams running Geth with LevelDB, the following patch allows setting LevelDB initialization parameters via environment variables:

https://github.com/0x00101010/goleveldb/commit/55ef34

This patch can be applied using a replace directive in go.mod when building op-geth. Here's how to modify the Dockerfile:

RUN git clone $REPO --branch $VERSION --single-branch . && \
    git switch -c branch-$VERSION $COMMIT && \
    bash -c '[ "$(git rev-parse HEAD)" = "$COMMIT" ]'
 
RUN echo '' >> go.mod && \ 
    echo 'replace github.com/syndtr/goleveldb => github.com/0x00101010/goleveldb v1.0.4-param-customization' >> go.mod && \ 
    go mod tidy \ 
 
# Continue building op-geth
COPY op-geth/ ./
RUN go run build/ci.go install -static ./cmd/geth

Recommended LevelDB environment variable values with this patch:

# Recommended LevelDB Settings
LDB_BLOCK_SIZE="524288" # 512 KiB block size (matches common RAID 0 chunk sizes)
LDB_COMPACTION_TABLE_SIZE="8388608" # 8 MiB compaction table size (default: 2 MiB)
LDB_COMPACTION_TOTAL_SIZE="41943040" # 40 MiB total compaction size (default: 8 MiB)
LDB_DEBUG_OPTIONS="1" # Emit LevelDB debug logs