Besu is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Mainnet compatible, Ethereum client written in Java.
If you have a question, need help, or want to engage with the Besu community, the following resources are available.
The Besu documentation answers many common questions. Some useful starting points:
- System requirements
- Troubleshoot peering
- Troubleshoot performance
- Configure ports
- Understand metrics
- Configure the JVM
- Join the Besu Discord:
#besuto interact with the dev team and get support, and#besu-contributorsif you are interested in contributing to the client. - Besu is an execution client and must be paired with a consensus client. If you are also running the Teku consensus client, the Consensys Discord is useful too (Mainnet Clients ->
#teku).
The Besu GitHub repository tracks recent releases, patch notes, and known issues with up-to-date status on fixes and mitigations. If Discord can't resolve your problem, search the existing issues and, if needed, open a new issue with relevant logs and context.
Version announcements are posted in the Discord announcements channel. Occasionally, the team also posts emergency alerts and support information on Discord and X.
Besu issues are tracked in the github issues tab. See our contributing guidelines for more details on searching and creating issues.
If you have any questions, queries or comments, Besu channel on Discord is the place to find us.
To install the Besu binary, follow these instructions.
- Contributing Guidelines
- Coding Conventions
- Command Line Interface (CLI) Style Guide
- Besu User Documentation for running and using Besu
Instructions for how to get started with developing on the Besu codebase. Please also read the contributing guidelines for more details on how to submit a pull request (PR).
This project uses Gradle dependency verification. When adding or updating dependencies, regenerate gradle/verification-metadata.xml with:
./gradlew --write-verification-metadata sha256 resolveSourceArtifactsThe resolveSourceArtifacts task ensures source JARs are included in the metadata, which is required for IDE sync (e.g. IntelliJ automatically downloads sources).
Besu supports performance profiling using Async Profiler, a low-overhead sampling profiler.
You can find setup and usage instructions in the Profiling Guide.
Profiling can help identify performance bottlenecks in block processing, transaction validation, and EVM execution.
Please ensure the profiler is run as the same user that started the Besu process.
Besu includes support for running Ethereum reference tests and generating detailed EVM execution traces.
To learn how to run the tests and enable opcode-level JSON tracing for debugging and correctness verification, see the Reference Test Execution and Tracing Guide.