Ethereum Testnet Deployment

Automated deployment of a private Ethereum testnet with 8 Reth nodes, Lighthouse consensus clients, and comprehensive monitoring stack.

Features

• 8-Node Ethereum Network: Reth execution layer + Lighthouse consensus layer
• Automated Deployment: Terraform + Ansible for infrastructure and configuration
• Performance Monitoring: Grafana dashboards with txpool metrics
• TPS Testing: Go-based tool for high-throughput transaction testing
• Production Ready: Optimized for performance testing and development

Architecture

• Chain Node: c6i.4xlarge EC2 instance running 8 Reth + Lighthouse nodes via Kurtosis
• TPS Node: t3.medium EC2 instance for transaction load generation
• Monitoring: Prometheus + Grafana + custom txpool exporter
• Network: Private testnet with 3-second block time, 600M gas limit

Prerequisites

• AWS account with configured credentials
• Terraform >= 1.0
• Ansible >= 2.9
• SSH key pair in AWS (default: sonicKey)

Quick Start

1. Configure Terraform

cd terraform
cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars
# Edit terraform.tfvars with your AWS settings

2. Deploy

./deploy.sh

The script will:

1. Provision EC2 instances with Terraform
2. Deploy Ethereum testnet with Ansible
3. Configure monitoring and dashboards
4. Display access information

3. Access Services

After deployment completes, you'll receive:

• RPC Endpoints: 8 nodes on dynamic ports (32xxx-33xxx)
• Grafana: http://CHAIN_IP:PORT (admin/admin)
• Prometheus: http://CHAIN_IP:PORT
• Txpool Metrics: http://CHAIN_IP:9200/metrics

Configuration

Network Parameters

Edit network_params.yaml to customize:

network_params:
  network_id: "3151908"
  seconds_per_slot: 3
  genesis_gaslimit: 600000000

Txpool Settings

Reth nodes are configured with:

• Pending transactions: 50,000 max
• Queued transactions: 50,000 max

TPS Testing

Build TPS Tool

cd ansible
go build -o tps-test-v2 tps-test-v2.go

Run Test

./tps-test-v2 \
  -tps 1000 \
  -duration 300 \
  -endpoints "http://IP:PORT1,http://IP:PORT2,..." \
  -addresses addresses.json \
  -funders "GENESIS_KEY1,GENESIS_KEY2,..." \
  -chain-id 3151908 \
  -gas-price 1000000000 \
  -gas-limit 21000

Parameters

• -tps: Target transactions per second
• -duration: Test duration in seconds (0 = infinite)
• -endpoints: Comma-separated RPC URLs
• -addresses: JSON file with test accounts
• -funders: Genesis account private keys for funding
• -skip-funding: Skip account funding phase
• -chain-id: Network chain ID
• -gas-price: Gas price in wei
• -gas-limit: Gas limit per transaction

Monitoring

Grafana Dashboard

The performance dashboard includes:

• Transaction throughput (TPS)
• Txpool status (pending/queued)
• Block production rate
• Gas utilization
• Per-node metrics

Txpool Exporter

Custom Python exporter collecting metrics from all 8 nodes:

• txpool_pending_transactions{node="el-N"}
• txpool_queued_transactions{node="el-N"}

Pre-funded Accounts

The testnet includes 21 pre-funded genesis accounts. First 5:

0x8943545177806ED17B9F23F0a21ee5948eCaa776 (bcdf20249abf0ed6d944c0288fad489e33f66b3960d9e6229c1cd214ed3bbe31)
0xE25583099BA105D9ec0A67f5Ae86D90e50036425 (39725efee3fb28614de3bacaffe4cc4bd8c436257e2c8bb887c4b5c4be45e76d)
0x614561D2d143621E126e87831AEF287678B442b8 (53321db7c1e331d93a11a41d16f004d7ff63972ec8ec7c25db329728ceeb1710)
0xf93Ee4Cf8c6c40b329b0c0626F28333c132CF241 (ab63b23eb7941c1251757e24b3d2350d2bc05c3c388d06f8fe6feafefb1e8c70)
0x802dCbE1B1A97554B4F50DB5119E37E8e7336417 (5d2344259f42259f82d2c140aa66102ba89b57b4883ee441a8b312622bd42491)

Cleanup

Stop Services

ssh -i ~/.ssh/sonicKey.pem ubuntu@CHAIN_IP "kurtosis enclave rm my-testnet --force"

Destroy Infrastructure

cd terraform
terraform destroy

Troubleshooting

Check Chain Status

ssh -i ~/.ssh/sonicKey.pem ubuntu@CHAIN_IP
kurtosis enclave inspect my-testnet

View Logs

# Reth logs
docker logs el-1-reth-lighthouse--<ID>

# Txpool exporter logs
journalctl -u txpool-exporter -f

Check Txpool

curl -X POST http://CHAIN_IP:PORT \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"txpool_status","params":[],"id":1}'

Project Structure

.
├── deploy.sh                    # Main deployment script
├── network_params.yaml          # Network configuration
├── terraform/                   # Infrastructure as code
│   ├── main.tf
│   ├── variables.tf
│   └── outputs.tf
├── ansible/                     # Configuration management
│   ├── playbook.yml
│   ├── tps-test-v2.go          # TPS testing tool
│   └── addresses.json          # Test accounts
├── txpool-exporter.py          # Prometheus exporter
└── performance-dashboard-v2.json  # Grafana dashboard

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please open an issue or PR.