Self-Host a Relay

If you are experiencing connectivity issues with the Obol hosted relays, or you want to improve your clusters latency and decentralization, you can opt to host your own relay on a separate open and static internet port.

# Figure out your public IP
curl v4.ident.me

# Clone the repo and cd into it.
git clone https://github.com/ObolNetwork/charon-distributed-validator-node.git

cd charon-distributed-validator-node

# Replace 'replace.with.public.ip.or.hostname' in relay/docker-compose.yml with your public IPv4 or DNS hostname

nano relay/docker-compose.yml

docker compose -f relay/docker-compose.yml up

Test whether the relay is publicly accessible. This should return an ENR: curl http://replace.with.public.ip.or.hostname:3640/enr

Ensure the ENR returned by the relay contains the correct public IP and port by decoding it with ENR viewer.

Configure ALL charon nodes in your cluster to use this relay:

• Either by adding a flag: --p2p-relays=http://replace.with.public.ip.or.hostname:3640/enr
• Or by setting the environment variable: CHARON_P2P_RELAYS=http://replace.with.public.ip.or.hostname:3640/enr

Note that a local relay/.charon/charon-enr-private-key file will be created next to relay/docker-compose.yml to ensure a persisted relay ENR across restarts.

A list of publicly available relays that can be used is maintained here.