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Official Golang implementation of the Ethereum protocol.
[](https://godoc.org/github.com/maticnetwork/bor)
[](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/maticnetwork/bor)
[](https://circleci.com/gh/maticnetwork/bor/tree/master)
[](https://discord.gg/nthXNEv)
Automated builds are available for stable releases and the unstable master branch. Binary
archives are published at https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/.
For prerequisites and detailed build instructions please read the [Installation Instructions](https://github.com/maticnetwork/bor/wiki/Building-Ethereum) on the wiki.
Building `bor` requires both a Go (version 1.10 or later) and a C compiler. You can install
them using your favourite package manager. Once the dependencies are installed, run
or, to build the full suite of utilities:
The go-ethereum project comes with several wrappers/executables found in the `cmd`
directory.
| Command | Description |
| :-----------: | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **`bor`** | Our main Ethereum CLI client. It is the entry point into the Ethereum network (main-, test- or private net), capable of running as a full node (default), archive node (retaining all historical state) or a light node (retrieving data live). It can be used by other processes as a gateway into the Ethereum network via JSON RPC endpoints exposed on top of HTTP, WebSocket and/or IPC transports. `geth --help` and the [CLI Wiki page](https://github.com/maticnetwork/bor/wiki/Command-Line-Options) for command line options. |
| `abigen` | Source code generator to convert Ethereum contract definitions into easy to use, compile-time type-safe Go packages. It operates on plain [Ethereum contract ABIs](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Ethereum-Contract-ABI) with expanded functionality if the contract bytecode is also available. However, it also accepts Solidity source files, making development much more streamlined. Please see our [Native DApps](https://github.com/maticnetwork/bor/wiki/Native-DApps:-Go-bindings-to-Ethereum-contracts) wiki page for details. |
| `bootnode` | Stripped down version of our Ethereum client implementation that only takes part in the network node discovery protocol, but does not run any of the higher level application protocols. It can be used as a lightweight bootstrap node to aid in finding peers in private networks. |
| `evm` | Developer utility version of the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) that is capable of running bytecode snippets within a configurable environment and execution mode. Its purpose is to allow isolated, fine-grained debugging of EVM opcodes (e.g. `evm --code 60ff60ff --debug`). |
| `gethrpctest` | Developer utility tool to support our [ethereum/rpc-test](https://github.com/ethereum/rpc-tests) test suite which validates baseline conformity to the [Ethereum JSON RPC](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JSON-RPC) specs. Please see the [test suite's readme](https://github.com/ethereum/rpc-tests/blob/master/README.md) for details. |
| `rlpdump` | Developer utility tool to convert binary RLP ([Recursive Length Prefix](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/RLP)) dumps (data encoding used by the Ethereum protocol both network as well as consensus wise) to user-friendlier hierarchical representation (e.g. `rlpdump --hex CE0183FFFFFFC4C304050583616263`). |
| `puppeth` | a CLI wizard that aids in creating a new Ethereum network. |
Going through all the possible command line flags is out of scope here (please consult our
[CLI Wiki page](https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Command-Line-Options)),
but we've enumerated a few common parameter combos to get you up to speed quickly
### Full node on the main Ethereum network
By far the most common scenario is people wanting to simply interact with the Ethereum
network: create accounts; transfer funds; deploy and interact with contracts. For this
particular use-case the user doesn't care about years-old historical data, so we can
fast-sync quickly to the current state of the network. To do so:
Chase Wright
committed
$ geth console
- Start `geth` in fast sync mode (default, can be changed with the `--syncmode` flag),
causing it to download more data in exchange for avoiding processing the entire history
of the Ethereum network, which is very CPU intensive.
- Start up `geth`'s built-in interactive [JavaScript console](https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/JavaScript-Console),
(via the trailing `console` subcommand) through which you can invoke all official [`web3` methods](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JavaScript-API)
as well as `geth`'s own [management APIs](https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Management-APIs).
This tool is optional and if you leave it out you can always attach to an already running
`geth` instance with `geth attach`.
### A Full node on the Ethereum test network
Transitioning towards developers, if you'd like to play around with creating Ethereum
contracts, you almost certainly would like to do that without any real money involved until
you get the hang of the entire system. In other words, instead of attaching to the main
network, you want to join the **test** network with your node, which is fully equivalent to
the main network, but with play-Ether only.
Chase Wright
committed
$ geth --testnet console
The `console` subcommand has the exact same meaning as above and they are equally
useful on the testnet too. Please see above for their explanations if you've skipped here.
Specifying the `--testnet` flag, however, will reconfigure your `geth` instance a bit:
- Instead of using the default data directory (`~/.ethereum` on Linux for example), `geth`
will nest itself one level deeper into a `testnet` subfolder (`~/.ethereum/testnet` on
Linux). Note, on OSX and Linux this also means that attaching to a running testnet node
requires the use of a custom endpoint since `geth attach` will try to attach to a
production node endpoint by default. E.g.
`geth attach <datadir>/testnet/bor.ipc`. Windows users are not affected by
this.
- Instead of connecting the main Ethereum network, the client will connect to the test
network, which uses different P2P bootnodes, different network IDs and genesis states.
_Note: Although there are some internal protective measures to prevent transactions from
crossing over between the main network and test network, you should make sure to always
use separate accounts for play-money and real-money. Unless you manually move
accounts, `geth` will by default correctly separate the two networks and will not make any
### Configuration
As an alternative to passing the numerous flags to the `bor` binary, you can also pass a
To get an idea how the file should look like you can use the `dumpconfig` subcommand to
export your existing configuration:
As a developer, sooner rather than later you'll want to start interacting with `geth` and the
Ethereum network via your own programs and not manually through the console. To aid
this, `geth` has built-in support for a JSON-RPC based APIs ([standard APIs](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JSON-RPC)
and [`bor` specific APIs](https://github.com/maticnetwork/bor/wiki/Management-APIs)).
These can be exposed via HTTP, WebSockets and IPC (UNIX sockets on UNIX based
platforms, and named pipes on Windows).
The IPC interface is enabled by default and exposes all the APIs supported by `geth`,
whereas the HTTP and WS interfaces need to manually be enabled and only expose a
subset of APIs due to security reasons. These can be turned on/off and configured as
you'd expect.
HTTP based JSON-RPC API options:
- `--rpc` Enable the HTTP-RPC server
- `--rpcaddr` HTTP-RPC server listening interface (default: `localhost`)
- `--rpcport` HTTP-RPC server listening port (default: `8545`)
- `--rpcapi` API's offered over the HTTP-RPC interface (default: `eth,net,web3`)
- `--rpccorsdomain` Comma separated list of domains from which to accept cross origin requests (browser enforced)
- `--ws` Enable the WS-RPC server
- `--wsaddr` WS-RPC server listening interface (default: `localhost`)
- `--wsport` WS-RPC server listening port (default: `8546`)
- `--wsapi` API's offered over the WS-RPC interface (default: `eth,net,web3`)
- `--wsorigins` Origins from which to accept websockets requests
- `--ipcdisable` Disable the IPC-RPC server
- `--ipcapi` API's offered over the IPC-RPC interface (default: `admin,debug,eth,miner,net,personal,shh,txpool,web3`)
- `--ipcpath` Filename for IPC socket/pipe within the datadir (explicit paths escape it)
You'll need to use your own programming environments' capabilities (libraries, tools, etc) to
connect via HTTP, WS or IPC to a `geth` node configured with the above flags and you'll
need to speak [JSON-RPC](https://www.jsonrpc.org/specification) on all transports. You
can reuse the same connection for multiple requests!
**Note: Please understand the security implications of opening up an HTTP/WS based
transport before doing so! Hackers on the internet are actively trying to subvert
Ethereum nodes with exposed APIs! Further, all browser tabs can access locally
running web servers, so malicious web pages could try to subvert locally available
APIs!**
## License
The bor library (i.e. all code outside of the `cmd` directory) is licensed under the
[GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.en.html),
also included in our repository in the `COPYING.LESSER` file.
The bor binaries (i.e. all code inside of the `cmd` directory) is licensed under the
[GNU General Public License v3.0](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html), also
included in our repository in the `COPYING` file.