Linea Sepolia RPC endpoint — grab one for free on Infura
Linea Sepolia wallet with at least 0.01 ETH
- Need test ETH? Use the Linea Sepolia faucet
- Already have ETH on Sepolia? Bridge it to Linea via the official bridge

🚀 Starting your node — pick one of three paths

#	Path	Quick-start command	What happens
1	rln.waku.org	Guided web setup	Register RLN in the browser, download `keystore.json`, then return here to proceed
2	setup_wizard	Fastest one-command bootstrap	Generates `.env`, registers RLN, and spins up the whole stack automatically
3	Manual script	Power users / CI	Mint & approve tokens yourself, then run the script for maximum control

recommended rln.waku.org

Note

RLN membership is your access key to The Waku Network. It is registered on-chain, enabling your nwaku node to send messages in a decentralized and privacy-preserving way while adhering to rate limits. Messages exceeding the rate limit will not be relayed by other peers.

If you’re upgrading from a version earlier than v0.36.0, we recommend starting from a fresh clone.

docker-compose automatically reads the .env file from the filesystem. A .env.example is provided as a template — copy it and update the values as needed:

cp .env.example .env
${EDITOR} .env

Make sure to NOT place any secrets into .env.example, as they might be unintentionally published in the Git repository.

if you just want to relay traffic (not publish), you don't need to perform the registration.

EXPERIMENTAL - Use wizard script

Run the wizard script. Once the script is done, the node will be started for you, so there is nothing else to do.

The script is experimental, feedback and pull requests are welcome.

./setup_wizard.sh

🔑 1. RLN.WAKU.ORG ( Recommended )

To register for RLN membership and generate your keystore:

Visit https://rln.waku.org.
Follow the instructions to register your membership and generate a keystore.json file.
Download the generated keystore.json and place it in the keystore/ directory of your nwaku-compose setup (i.e., at keystore/keystore.json).

Manual Script

You can also register your membership using the provided script, which will store it in keystore/keystore.json.

Before registering you need to mint and approve the tokens to pay for the registration. The simplest way is using Foundry's cast tool, which you can install with:

curl -L https://foundry.paradigm.xyz | bash
foundryup

Mint the token used to pay for RLN Membership registration from your Linea Sepolia account (This is a generic ERC20 token used for testnet only): The amount of "5000000000000000000" is how much is needed to register with a rln-relay-user-message-limit of 100

cast send $TOKEN_CONTRACT_ADDRESS "mint(address,uint256)" $ETH_TESTNET_ACCOUNT 5000000000000000000 --private-key $ETH_TESTNET_KEY --rpc-url $RLN_RELAY_ETH_CLIENT_ADDRESS

Approve the RLN contract to spend tokens on behalf of your account:

cast send $TOKEN_CONTRACT_ADDRESS "approve(address,uint256)" $RLN_CONTRACT_ADDRESS 5000000000000000000 --private-key $ETH_TESTNET_KEY --rpc-url $RLN_RELAY_ETH_CLIENT_ADDRESS

This command will register your membership and store it in keystore/keystore.json:

./register_rln.sh

💽 2. Select DB Parameters

Waku runs a PostgreSQL Database to store messages from the network and serve them to other peers. To prevent the database to grow indefinitely, you need to select how much disk space to allocate. You can either run a script that will estimate and set a good value:

./set_storage_retention.sh

Or select your own value. For example, 50GB:

echo "STORAGE_SIZE=50GB" >> .env

Depending on your machine's memory, it may be worth allocating more memory to the Postgres container to ensure heavy queries are served:

./set_postgres_shm.sh

Or select your own value manually, for example, 4g:

echo "POSTGRES_SHM=4g" >> .env

🖥️ 3. Start your node

Start all processes: nwaku node, database and grafana for metrics. Your RLN membership is loaded into nwaku under the hood.

docker-compose up -d

⚠️ The node might take a few minutes the very first time it runs because it needs to build locally the RLN community membership tree.

###🏄🏼‍♂️ 4. Interact with your nwaku node

See localhost:3000 for node metrics.
See localhost:4000 for a nice frontend to chat with other users.

📬 4. Use the REST API

Your nwaku node exposes a REST API to interact with it.

# get nwaku version
curl http://127.0.0.1:8645/debug/v1/version
# get nwaku info
curl http://127.0.0.1:8645/debug/v1/info

Publish a message to a contentTopic. Everyone subscribed to it will receive it. Note that payload is base64 encoded.

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:8645/relay/v1/auto/messages" \
 -H "content-type: application/json" \
 -d '{"payload":"'$(echo -n "Hello Waku Network - from Anonymous User" | base64)'","contentTopic":"/my-app/2/chatroom-1/proto"}'

Get messages sent to a contentTopic. Note that any store node in the network is used to reply.

curl -X GET "http://127.0.0.1:8645/store/v1/messages?contentTopics=%2Fmy-app%2F2%2Fchatroom-1%2Fproto&pageSize=50&ascending=true" \
 -H "accept: application/json"

For advanced documentation, refer to ADVANCED.md.

How to update to latest version

We regularly announce new available versions in our Discord server.

From `v0.29` or older

You will need to delete both the keystore and rln_tree folders, and register your membership again before using the new version by running the following commands:

cd nwaku-compose ( go into the root's repository folder )
docker-compose down
sudo rm -r keystore rln_tree
git pull origin master
./register_rln.sh
docker-compose up -d

From `v0.30` or newer

Updating the node is as simple as running the following:

cd nwaku-compose ( go into the root's repository folder )
docker-compose down
git pull origin master
docker-compose up -d

Set size

To improve storage on the network, you can increase the allocated space for the database. To do so, you can simply run:

./set_storage_retention.sh

Check

Once done, check your node is healthy:

./chkhealth.sh

All good:

02:15:51 - node health status is:

{
  "nodeHealth": "Ready",
  "protocolsHealth": [
    {
      "Rln Relay": "Ready"
    }
  ]
}

If the ./chkhealth.sh script is hanging or returns the following, wait a few minutes and run it again:

02:17:57 - node health status is:

{
  "nodeHealth": "Initializing",
  "protocolsHealth": []
}

Clean-up

Docker artefact can take some precious disk space, run the following commands to free space while your node is running.

Only do this if this machine is solely used for Waku and you have no other docker services.

I repeat, this will clean other docker services and images not running, only do this if this machine is only used for Waku.

# Be sure that your containers **are running**
sudo docker-compose up -d

# Clean docker system files
sudo docker system prune -a

# Delete docker images
sudo docker image prune -a

# Delete docker containers
sudo docker container prune

# Delete docker volumes
sudo docker volume prune

journal

If your /var/log gets quite large:

journalctl --disk-usage
> Archived and active journals take up 1.5G in the file system.

You can cap the size in /etc/systemd/journald.conf with

SystemMaxUse=50M

then restart to apply

systemctl restart systemd-journald

and verify

journalctl --disk-usage
> Archived and active journals take up 55.8M in the file system.

FAQ

see

README.md Unescape Escape

nwaku-compose

📝 Prerequisites