Quickstart

Get started with Obol Stack in under 5 minutes

This guide walks you through installing the Obol Stack, setting up an AI agent, and optionally deploying a blockchain network.

Prerequisites

• Docker installed and running on your machine.

• macOS or Linux operating system.

• At least 8 GB of RAM available.

Ensure Docker is running before proceeding. You can verify this by running docker info in your terminal.

Step 1: Install Obol Stack

Run the bootstrap installer:

bash <(curl -s https://stack.obol.org)

The installer will:

1. Validate that Docker is running.

2. Install the obol CLI binary and dependencies (kubectl, helm, k3d, helmfile, k9s).

3. Configure your PATH and add obol.stack to /etc/hosts.

4. Offer to start the cluster immediately.

Default installation

bash <(curl -s https://stack.obol.org)

Files are installed to:

• Config: ~/.config/obol/

• Data: ~/.local/share/obol/

• Binaries: ~/.local/bin/

Specific version

Development mode

Step 2: Start the stack

obol stack init
obol stack up

The first startup may take a few minutes as Docker pulls the required images.

Step 3: Set up the AI agent

Initialize an OpenClaw agent instance:

obol agent init

This walks you through choosing a model provider:

• Ollama (local, free) - if Ollama is detected on your machine

• Anthropic or OpenAI - routed through the in-cluster llmspy gateway

Once complete, open the agent dashboard:

obol openclaw dashboard

Each agent is automatically provisioned with an Ethereum signing wallet (via the remote-signer service). The wallet address is displayed during setup.

You can reconfigure the model provider at any time with obol openclaw setup.

Step 4: Deploy a blockchain network (optional)

The stack ships with built-in RPC access to Ethereum mainnet and Hoodi via Obol's RPC — no node required. However if your agent is making a lot of requests or needs a Consensus Layer client to run a distributed validator, you might want to run your own local node:

# Install an Ethereum node on Hoodi testnet
obol network install ethereum --network=hoodi

# Deploy to the cluster
obol network sync ethereum

This creates the deployment ethereum/hoodi and registers the local node as the primary RPC upstream, with the built-in public RPCs as automatic fallback.

Check the deployment:

obol kubectl get pods -n ethereum-hoodi

You can also deploy mainnet (obol network install ethereum) or sepolia (obol network install ethereum --network=sepolia). Run multiple networks side by side — use obol network sync ethereum or obol network sync ethereum/hoodi to target a specific one.

Step 5: Explore

# Interactive cluster UI. (Press '0' to view all)
obol k9s

# View all pods
obol kubectl get pods -A

# Check tunnel status (public URL)
obol tunnel status

# Configure model provider globally
obol model setup

Stopping and cleaning up

# Stop the cluster (preserves data)
obol stack down

# Restart
obol stack up

# Remove everything including data
obol stack purge -f

obol stack purge -f is irreversible. It removes all cluster data and configuration.

Next steps

• Installing networks - Deploy different blockchain networks.

• Installing apps - Deploy additional applications.

• FAQ - Common questions and troubleshooting.