How I turned a mini-PC into an Ethereum node to run at home

With thanks to Paul Wackerow.

I’m a blockchain developer, but I’ve intentionally stayed away from hardware setups in case I got something wrong. It’s been my intention to get set up for Ethereum staking for some time.

Wackerow, responsible for ethereum.org’s amazing documentation on Staking with Ethereum and Running a Node, gave me confidence that I could have a go at running my own node. I’m going to tackle my write-up in multiple stages.

This post focuses on node setup.

First things first. The official docs explain the difference between solo staking, staking as a service, pooled staking and centralized exchanges. I’m not going to go into detail about the differences again here — you just need to know that I’m going to have a go at doing this on my own. Full solo.

It’s no doubt far easier to just buy a DappNode and get it running straight out the box. But, if you’re up for some fun and fancy (an attempt at) saving some cash, then — assuming you buy the right stuff — assembling the bits and pieces yourself can save about $500, based on a DappNode price of EUR 1297 ($1330) at the time of writing.

Read along, to learn more about how I set this up from scratch with some pretty stunted knowledge about hardware. I am not suggesting that you should follow the steps I took (in fact I encourage you not to), but hopefully I can save you from some headaches along the way.