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Gnosis Chain is moving to Gnosis EEZ

These guides cover running a node and a validator on Gnosis Chain as it runs today, and stay valid until the fork. At activation the validator set retires and nodes keep only an execution client. See the move to Gnosis EEZ.

Managing an existing validator? Go to Validator withdrawals or Voluntary exit.

Reth

Gnosis‑compatible Reth client — not a fork, but an extension built with the NodeBuilder API.

Repository: gnosischain/reth_gnosis

Installation

Reth differs from other clients: you must import a post‑merge state.
All file downloads are handled internally in the setup script.

You can run the node in two ways:

  1. Docker – zero‑build, quick start
  2. Build from source – recommended for development / custom builds

Option 1 – Using Docker​

Pull the image:

docker pull ghcr.io/gnosischain/reth_gnosis:v1.0.3

Running Reth for Gnosis​

Create a data directory (DB, configs, etc.):

mkdir ./reth_data

A temporary directory is created during initialisation to download the post‑merge snapshot and is removed automatically afterwards.

Copy your Engine API jwtsecret into that folder:

cp /path/to/jwtsecret ./reth_data/jwtsecret

Quick Chiado run​

docker run \
  -v ./reth_data:/data \
  ghcr.io/gnosischain/reth_gnosis:v1.0.3 node \
  --chain chiado \
  --datadir /data \
  --authrpc.port=8551 \
  --authrpc.jwtsecret=/data/jwtsecret

Full Gnosis Chain example​

docker run --network host \
  -v $PWD/reth_data:/data \
  ghcr.io/gnosischain/reth_gnosis:v1.0.3 node \
  -vvvv \
  --chain gnosis \
  --datadir /data \
  --http \
  --http.port=8545 \
  --http.addr=0.0.0.0 \
  --http.corsdomain='*' \
  --http.api=admin,net,eth,web3,debug,trace \
  --authrpc.port=8551 \
  --authrpc.addr=0.0.0.0 \
  --authrpc.jwtsecret=/data/jwtsecret \
  --discovery.port=30303 \
  --discovery.addr=0.0.0.0

Option 2 – Build from Source​

Prerequisites​

  • Stable Rust toolchain
  • Typical C tool‑chain dependencies (clang, cmake, pkg-config, …)

Clone & build​

git clone https://github.com/gnosischain/reth_gnosis.git
cd reth_gnosis
git checkout master

cargo build --release

Note: The original instructions state “This will build the project in debug mode.”
Using --release actually produces an optimised binary at ./target/release/reth.

Node setup​

mkdir ./reth_data                         # persistent DB/config folder
cp /path/to/jwtsecret ./reth_data/jwtsecret

Quick Chiado run​

./target/release/reth node \
  -vvvv \
  --chain chiado \
  --datadir ./reth_data \
  --http \
  --http.port=8545 \
  --http.addr=0.0.0.0 \
  --http.corsdomain='*' \
  --http.api=admin,net,eth,web3,debug,trace \
  --authrpc.port=8551 \
  --authrpc.addr=0.0.0.0 \
  --authrpc.jwtsecret=./reth_data/jwtsecret \
  --discovery.port=30303 \
  --discovery.addr=0.0.0.0

Replace --chain chiado with --chain gnosis for Gnosis mainnet.

Data directory defaults​

If --datadir is omitted, Reth falls back to the OS‑specific default path:

OSDefault path
Linux$XDG_DATA_HOME/reth/ or $HOME/.local/share/reth/
macOS$HOME/Library/Application Support/reth/
Windows%APPDATA%\reth\