light-beaconchain-explorer

README

Lightweight Beaconchain Explorer

What is this?

This is a lightweight beaconchain explorer.

A Beaconchain explorer is a tool that allows users to view and interact with the data on the Ethereum Beacon Chain. It is similar to a blockchain explorer, which allows users to view data on a blockchain such as the current state of transactions and blocks - but focussed on exploring the beaconchain.

This "lightweight" explorer loads most of the information directly from an underlying standard beacon node api, which makes it a lot easier and cheaper to run (no 3rd party proprietary database like bigtables required).

Dependencies

This explorer requires a postgres database.

Setup

To run the explorer, you need to create a configuration file first. Download a copy of the default config and change it for your needs.

Afterwards, download the latest binary for your distribution from the releases page and start the explorer with the following command:

./explorer_linux_amd64 -config=explorer-config.yaml

You should now be able to access the explorer via http://localhost:8080

Use docker image

I'm maintaining a docker image for this explorer: pk910/light-beaconchain-explorer

There are various images available:

• latest: The latest release
• unstable: That latest master branch version (automatically built)
• v1.x.x: Version specific images for all releases.

Follow these steps to run the docker image:

1. Create a copy of the default config and change it for your needs.
   You'll especially need to configure the chain, beaconapi & database sections.

   wget -O explorer-config.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pk910/light-beaconchain-explorer/master/config/default.config.yml
   nano explorer-config.yaml
   

2. Start the container

   docker run -d --restart unless-stopped --name=beaconlight -v $(pwd):/config -p 8080:8080 -it pk910/light-beaconchain-explorer:latest -config=/config/explorer-config.yaml
   

You should now be able to access the explorer via http://localhost:8080

read logs:

docker logs beaconlight --follow

stop & remove container:

docker stop beaconlight

docker rm -f beaconlight

Background

https://github.com/ethpandaops/tooling-wishlist/blob/master/tools/lightweight-beaconchain-explorer.md

Open Points / Ideas

Things that might be worth adding at some time

• Validator Overview & Details
  The current validator set is actually already maintained in memory. So it should be easy to add pages for basic validator related stuff.
  • Page: Validators List (/validators)
  • Page: Validator Details (/validator/{validator_index})
    • Rough overview with status (activated, slashed, ...) & current balance
    • Recent Blocks (from db)
    • Recent Attestations (from cache)
• Track Sync Committees
  • Database: table sync_committees (Sync Committee index)
  • Indexer: track sync committees & aggregate participation per validator
  • UI: show recent sync committee assignments on Validator Details page
• Track Deposits
  • Database: table deposits (Deposit index)
  • RPC Client: get deposit contract events from EL client
  • Indexer: track deposits
  • UI: deposits list

Thanks To

This explorer is heavily based on the code from gobitfly/eth2-beaconchain-explorer.

License