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The Nimbus Guide

Nimbus is a client for the Ethereum network that is lightweight, secure and easy to use.

Its efficiency and low resource consumption allows it to perform well on all kinds of systems: ranging from Raspberry Pi and mobile devices — where it contributes to low power consumption and security — to powerful servers where it leaves resources free to perform other tasks.

This book describes the consensus protocol implementation which includes a beacon node, validator client and consensus light client.

An execution client is also under development - it runs as an integrated part of the unified client or stand-alone.

Unified client

The Nimbus unified client runs a full Ethereum node, including both consensus and execution clients, in a single command! This is the easiest way to get started with your own Ethereum node.

Our companion project, the Nimbus Portal client (formerly fluffy), connects to the Ethereum portal network and has its own guide.

Feature highlights

Design goals

One of our most important design goals is an application architecture that makes it simple to run and simple to embed into other software.

Another goal is to minimize reliance on third-party software.

A third one is for the application binary to be as lightweight as possible in terms of resources used.

Integration with Status

Nimbus is tightly integrated into the Status messaging app, driving forward the light client protocol to make that possible.

Book contents

You can read this book from start to finish, or you might want to read just specific topics you're interested in:

Get in touch

Need help with anything? Join us on Discord.

We welcome contribution to 0xDeb4A0e8d9a8dB30a9f53AF2dCc9Eb27060c6557 - the funds there help sustain and support for the long term.

Disclaimer

This documentation assumes Nimbus is in its ideal state. Please submit a Github issue if you come across a problem.