Celestia Mainnet — Consensus Node Installation

This guide installs a Celestia consensus node (celestia-appd) for mainnet chain ID celestia.

Current Versions

• Recommended consensus binary: v9.0.6
• Current protocol app: v9
• Previous compatible app binary: v8.0.8
• App v9 activated at height: 11771698
• Go for source builds: 1.26.1+
• POSTHUMAN snapshot format: PebbleDB snapshot-latest.tar.lz4; check snapshot.json for the latest published build

Use the v9.0.6 wrapper for new installs and recoveries. Mainnet has already passed the app v9 activation height.

Check live network state before choosing the binary:

curl -fsS https://celestia-rpc.publicnode.com/status | \
  jq -r '.result.node_info.network, .result.sync_info.latest_block_height, .result.sync_info.catching_up'

Requirements

• Ubuntu 24.04+ for the official release binary, or Ubuntu 22.04+ when building celestia-appd from source locally.
• 16 CPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB NVMe, 1 Gbps network for validator-grade use.
• Open ports:
  • P2P: 26656/tcp
  • RPC/API/gRPC only if intentionally exposed.

1. Install Packages

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y curl wget jq tar lz4 git make gcc chrony build-essential \
  clang pkg-config libssl-dev ncdu

2. Install celestia-appd

Use the current recommended mainnet wrapper binary.

APP_VERSION="v9.0.6"

cd "$HOME"
rm -rf celestia-app-release
mkdir celestia-app-release
cd celestia-app-release

curl -fLO "https://github.com/celestiaorg/celestia-app/releases/download/${APP_VERSION}/celestia-app_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz"
curl -fLO "https://github.com/celestiaorg/celestia-app/releases/download/${APP_VERSION}/checksums.txt"

sha256sum -c --ignore-missing checksums.txt
tar -xzf celestia-app_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz

chmod +x celestia-appd
sudo mv celestia-appd /usr/local/bin/celestia-appd
celestia-appd version

If the official binary fails with a GLIBC error on Ubuntu 22.04, build celestia-app from source on the host instead of using the release archive.

3. Initialize

MONIKER="<YOUR_NODE_NAME>"
CHAIN_ID="celestia"
CELESTIA_HOME="$HOME/.celestia-app"

celestia-appd init "$MONIKER" --chain-id "$CHAIN_ID" --home "$CELESTIA_HOME"

4. Download Genesis and Addrbook

curl -fL https://snapshots.posthuman.digital/celestia-mainnet/genesis.json \
  -o "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/genesis.json"

curl -fL https://snapshots.posthuman.digital/celestia-mainnet/addrbook.json \
  -o "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/addrbook.json"

jq -r '.chain_id // .genesis.chain_id' "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/genesis.json"

Expected chain ID: celestia.

5. Configure

# Minimum gas price
sed -i 's|minimum-gas-prices =.*|minimum-gas-prices = "0.002utia"|' \
  "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/app.toml"

# Pruned node profile
sed -i -e 's|^pruning *=.*|pruning = "custom"|' \
       -e 's|^pruning-keep-recent *=.*|pruning-keep-recent = "100"|' \
       -e 's|^pruning-interval *=.*|pruning-interval = "19"|' \
  "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/app.toml"

# PebbleDB profile; required for current POSTHUMAN snapshots
sed -i -e 's|^db_backend *=.*|db_backend = "pebbledb"|' \
  "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/config.toml"

if grep -q '^app-db-backend' "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/app.toml"; then
  sed -i 's|^app-db-backend *=.*|app-db-backend = "pebbledb"|' \
    "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/app.toml"
else
  printf '\napp-db-backend = "pebbledb"\n' >> "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/app.toml"
fi

# Disable transaction indexer unless you need indexed queries
sed -i 's|^indexer *=.*|indexer = "null"|' \
  "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/config.toml"

# Enable Prometheus metrics
sed -i 's|prometheus = false|prometheus = true|' \
  "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/config.toml"

# POSTHUMAN persistent peer
PEERS="2cc7330049bc02e4276668c414222593d52eb718@135.181.227.236:40656"
sed -i -e "/^\\[p2p\\]/,/^\\[/{s|^[[:space:]]*persistent_peers *=.*|persistent_peers = \\"$PEERS\\"|}" \
  "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/config.toml"

6. Restore From POSTHUMAN Snapshot

Use the PebbleDB snapshot for faster sync. Verify snapshot.json against a trusted reference RPC before using it. If metadata and network height disagree, stop and investigate before restore.

curl -fsS https://snapshots.posthuman.digital/celestia-mainnet/snapshot.json | jq .
curl -fsS https://celestia-rpc.publicnode.com/status | \
  jq -r '.result.sync_info.latest_block_height'

Restore:

SNAP_DIR="$HOME/celestia-mainnet-snapshot-restore"
rm -rf "$SNAP_DIR"
mkdir -p "$SNAP_DIR"
curl -fL https://snapshots.posthuman.digital/celestia-mainnet/snapshot-latest.tar.lz4 | \
  lz4 -dc | tar -xf - -C "$SNAP_DIR"
test -d "$SNAP_DIR/data/application.db"

cp "$CELESTIA_HOME/data/priv_validator_state.json" \
   "$CELESTIA_HOME/priv_validator_state.json.backup" 2>/dev/null || true

sudo systemctl stop celestia-appd 2>/dev/null || true
BACKUP_DIR="$CELESTIA_HOME/data.before-snapshot-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)"
if [ -d "$CELESTIA_HOME/data" ]; then
  mv "$CELESTIA_HOME/data" "$BACKUP_DIR"
fi
mv "$SNAP_DIR/data" "$CELESTIA_HOME/data"

if [ -f "$CELESTIA_HOME/priv_validator_state.json.backup" ]; then
  mv "$CELESTIA_HOME/priv_validator_state.json.backup" \
     "$CELESTIA_HOME/data/priv_validator_state.json"
fi

7. Create Systemd Service

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/celestia-appd.service > /dev/null <<EOF
[Unit]
Description=Celestia consensus node
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=$USER
WorkingDirectory=$CELESTIA_HOME
ExecStart=$(command -v celestia-appd) start --home $CELESTIA_HOME
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=65535

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable celestia-appd
sudo systemctl restart celestia-appd

8. Verify

sudo systemctl status celestia-appd --no-pager
journalctl -u celestia-appd -n 100 --no-pager

curl -fsS http://127.0.0.1:26657/status | jq -r '
  .result.node_info.network,
  .result.sync_info.latest_block_height,
  .result.sync_info.latest_block_time,
  .result.sync_info.catching_up'

The node is ready when network=celestia, height advances, recent block time is fresh, and catching_up=false.

9. Wallet and Validator Commands

Create a wallet:

WALLET="wallet"
celestia-appd keys add "$WALLET"

Restore a wallet:

WALLET="wallet"
celestia-appd keys add "$WALLET" --recover

Create validator only after the node is synced and the operator has reviewed the transaction:

celestia-appd tx staking create-validator <validator.json> \
  --from "$WALLET" \
  --chain-id celestia \
  --node http://127.0.0.1:26657 \
  --fees 21000utia

Do not broadcast validator, staking, governance, or unjail transactions until the signer, account, sequence, gas, fees, and message are verified.