Setup IBFT 2.0 PoA Ethereum Private Chain with Besu on AWS Cloud via Terraform

Besu CLI: https://besu.hyperledger.org/private-networks/tutorials/ibft

Besu API methods: https://besu.hyperledger.org/private-networks/reference/api

Besu Plugin API: https://besu.hyperledger.org/private-networks/reference/plugin-api-interfaces

Summary flow:

• Setup Network Core:
  • Generate blockchain config (Genesis file, validator node keys)
  • Make sure each node uses the same Genesis config file and boot nodes
  • Start all nodes and sync data
  • Monitor chain via ethstats
  • Validate chain with RPC curl
  • Connect Metamask & transfer
• Setup Network Tools:
  • Ethernal explorer
  • Blockscout explorer

Network configuration

• Ethereum Client: Besu
• Ethereum Stats: Ethstats
• Ethereum Explorer: Ethernal & Blockscout
• Consensus: IBFT2.0
• Deploy environment: AWS Cloud via Terraform
• Gas price: 1000 Wei (0.000001 GWei) (default)
• Gas limit: 30M
• Ethereum client: besu
• Block time: 1s (minimum)
• Block size: ~1KB

Hardware recommendation

• AWS instance type: >= t3.medium
• Processor: x86-64 bit 2-4+ cores
• Memory: 4-8 GB
• Storage: 50-100GB
• Operating System: Linux (Ubuntu 20.04)

Calculate minimum DISK Size Growing

• Basic transfer native coin (ETH) is a fixed cost of 21,000 gas
• An ETH transfer transaction typically uses about 109 bytes of data. Here’s a breakdown of how these bytes are used:
  1. Nonce (8 bytes): Unique identifier for the transaction from a specific sender to prevent double-spending and to keep transactions in order.
  2. Gas Price (16 bytes): The amount of ETH the sender is willing to pay per unit of gas.
  3. Gas Limit (8 bytes): The maximum amount of gas the sender allows for this transaction (for an ETH transfer, this is set to 21,000).
  4. To Address (20 bytes): The recipient’s address.
  5. Value (32 bytes): The amount of ETH to transfer, stored as a 256-bit value.
  6. Data (0 bytes): Since an ETH transfer is a simple transaction, it does not include additional data.
  7. V, R, S (65 bytes total): The cryptographic signature fields used to validate the transaction, which include recovery id (V), and the signature (R and S values).
• Assume 1 tx in a block ⇒ Block size:
  • Block Header: 500 – 600 bytes
  • Transaction Data: 109 bytes for basic transfer
  • Transaction Receipt: 80 – 100 bytes for basic transfer
  • Total: 600+109+100=809 bytes ~ 1KB ceil rounded
• Estimation for 10 years:
  • Total blocks in 10 years (Block time = 1 second): 10 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 = 315,360,000 blocks
  • Minimum total size = 1 KB * 315360000 = 315.4 GB

Infrastructure as Code

https://github.com/nhancv/nchain

Demo