1. Running a Radix Node

Overview

A Radix node connects to the peer-to-peer network, syncs ledger state, and (if registered as a validator) participates in Cerberus consensus. You can run a node to power your own API endpoints, support the network, or earn staking emissions as a validator.

Hardware Requirements

Installation

Radix provides two installation methods:

Option A: CLI-Guided Install (Recommended)

The babylonnode CLI tool walks you through configuration interactively:

wget -O babylonnode https://github.com/radixdlt/babylon-nodecli/releases/latest/download/babylonnode-ubuntu-22.04
chmod +x babylonnode
sudo mv babylonnode /usr/local/bin/
 
# Run guided setup
babylonnode docker install

Option B: Docker Manual Setup

For more control, use docker-compose directly with the official images from radixdlt/babylon-node.

Option C: Systemd

Run the node process directly on the host, managed by systemd. Better for servers shared with other services.

All methods are documented at docs.radixdlt.com/docs/node-setup.

Which Node Version the CLI Installs

The latest/download URL above has not moved since babylonnode 2.2.4, published on 13 January 2025, and the only commit on the tool's main branch since is CI housekeeping in March that year. That tells you nothing about the node you will end up running, because the CLI does not carry a node version at all.

Instead it resolves the node, nginx and Gateway tags at run time from ghproxy.radixdlt.com, a Radix-operated mirror of the GitHub releases API, and installs whatever tag comes back. Asked on 21 August 2026, it returns babylon-node v1.3.0.5 – a release that shipped nearly seventeen months after the CLI binary did. A frozen installer and a current node are not in tension here; the indirection is the point.

Two consequences are worth knowing before an unattended rebuild depends on it:

• It is a single external dependency. If that proxy does not answer, the CLI prints the failing URL and exits – there is no fallback to the GitHub API it mirrors.
• You can pin past it. Setting RADIXDLT_APP_VERSION_OVERRIDE – or RADIXDLT_NGINX_VERSION_OVERRIDE and RADIXDLT_GATEWAY_VERSION_OVERRIDE for the other two – makes the CLI use that exact tag without asking anyone, which is what a reproducible validator rebuild wants.

The published binaries cover Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 only, with no 24.04 build – which is why 22.04 is the operating system named in the table above rather than the newer LTS. Operators on a distribution the CLI does not ship for take the Docker or systemd path instead.

Becoming a Validator

Once your node is synced, you can register it as a validator to participate in consensus and earn emissions.

1. Register – submit a validator registration transaction (costs 5-30 XRD in fees)
2. Configure – set your validator name, website URL, fee percentage, and delegation policy
3. Attract stake – the top 100 validators by total delegated stake are active each epoch
4. Maintain uptime – missed proposals reduce your emissions share

See the validator setup guide for detailed steps.

Monitoring

Use the standard Prometheus + Grafana stack for observability:

1. Install Node Exporter for system metrics (CPU, RAM, disk, network)
2. Configure Prometheus to scrape your node's metrics endpoint
3. Set up Grafana dashboards to visualize node health, sync status, and proposal statistics

The node also exposes a System API for diagnostics – connection status, health checks, and performance metrics. See Radix APIs for details.

Maintenance

• Protocol updates – update your node software when new protocol versions are released; validators must signal readiness
• Backups – the ledger can be rebuilt from the network, but backing up your validator key is critical
• Snapshots – daily ledger snapshots are available at snapshots.radix.live for faster initial sync

Next Steps

• Radix APIs – what your node exposes, and when to use it instead of a public Gateway

External Links

• Node introduction
• Node setup guide
• Validator setup
• Maintenance guide
• babylon-node GitHub
• babylon-nodecli GitHub – the babylonnode tool