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

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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.

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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

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Initial Sync

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

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Client Software

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

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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.

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Geth Performance Tuning

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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)

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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/55ef3429673fb70d389d052a15a4423e13d8b43c

This patch can be applied using a replace directive in go.mod when building op-geth. Here’s how to modify your 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