System requirements

Detailed hardware, software, and infrastructure requirements for running the Bitcoin Indexer in production.

Hardware specifications

The Bitcoin Indexer processes every Bitcoin transaction to extract metaprotocol data. Hardware requirements scale with the metaprotocols you index and API traffic you serve.

Minimum requirements

Component	Specification	Notes
CPU	6 cores / 12 threads	AMD Ryzen 5 or Intel i5
RAM	16 GB DDR4	32 GB for multiple metaprotocols
Storage	2 TB NVMe SSD	Fast random I/O critical
Network	100 Mbps	1 Gbps for initial sync
Bitcoin Node	Dedicated instance	Cannot share with indexer

Recommended production setup

Component	Specification	Notes
CPU	16+ cores / 32+ threads	AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon
RAM	64 GB DDR4 ECC	More for heavy API load
Storage	4 TB NVMe RAID 1	Redundancy recommended
Network	10 Gbps	Low latency to Bitcoin node
Bitcoin Node	Dedicated server	Same datacenter preferred

Storage requirements

Storage needs grow over time as the blockchain and metaprotocol activity increase:

Current storage usage (Dec 2024)

Component	Size	Growth Rate
Bitcoin blockchain	~580 GB	~50 GB/year
Ordinals index	~450 GB	~150 GB/year
Runes index	~80 GB	~30 GB/year
BRC-20 index	~120 GB	~40 GB/year
PostgreSQL + overhead	~200 GB	Varies
`Total`	~1.5 TB	~300 GB/year

Storage planning

Plan for 2-3x current requirements to accommodate growth and temporary files during reindexing.

Software dependencies

Operating system

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS recommended. Also tested on:

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Debian 11/12
RHEL 8/9
macOS 13+ (development only)

Required software

Bitcoin Core

# Version 25.0 or higher
bitcoind --version

PostgreSQL

# Version 14 or higher
psql --version

Build tools (if compiling from source)

# Rust 1.70+
rustc --version

# Clang/LLVM
clang --version

Bitcoin node configuration

Your Bitcoin node requires specific settings for the indexer:

title="/path/to/bitcoin.conf"

# Required settings
server=1
txindex=1
zmqpubrawblock=tcp://127.0.0.1:28332
zmqpubrawtx=tcp://127.0.0.1:28333

# Performance settings
dbcache=8192
maxmempool=1000
mempoolexpiry=72

# Network settings
maxconnections=125
maxuploadtarget=5000

txindex requirement

The txindex=1 setting is mandatory. If your node doesn't have a transaction index, you'll need to reindex with bitcoind -reindex.

PostgreSQL configuration

Optimize PostgreSQL for write-heavy workloads:

title="/etc/postgresql/14/main/postgresql.conf"

# Memory settings
shared_buffers = 8GB
effective_cache_size = 24GB
work_mem = 256MB
maintenance_work_mem = 2GB

# Write performance
checkpoint_segments = 64
checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
wal_buffers = 16MB
synchronous_commit = off

# Connection settings
max_connections = 200
max_wal_size = 4GB

Database initialization

Terminal

$ sudo -u postgres createuser bitcoin_indexer
$ sudo -u postgres createdb -O bitcoin_indexer bitcoin_metaprotocols
$ sudo -u postgres psql -c "ALTER USER bitcoin_indexer WITH PASSWORD 'secure_password';"

Network architecture

Port requirements

Service	Port	Protocol	Direction	Purpose
Bitcoin P2P	8333	TCP	Inbound/Outbound	Blockchain sync
Bitcoin RPC	8332	TCP	Localhost	Node communication
Bitcoin ZMQ	28332-28333	TCP	Localhost	Block notifications
PostgreSQL	5432	TCP	Localhost	Database access
Indexer API	3000	TCP	Inbound	REST endpoints

Security considerations

1Firewall rules - Only expose API port (3000) publicly
2Bitcoin node - Bind RPC/ZMQ to localhost only
3PostgreSQL - Restrict to local connections
4API rate limiting - Implement reverse proxy limits
5SSL/TLS - Use HTTPS for production APIs

Monitoring setup

System metrics to track

CPU usage - Parser threads should use 60-80%
Memory usage - Watch for OOM conditions
Disk I/O - Monitor IOPS and latency
Network bandwidth - Track Bitcoin node sync
PostgreSQL performance - Query response times

Recommended monitoring stack

# docker-compose.yml snippet
services:
  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus:latest
    volumes:
      - ./prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
      
  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:latest
    ports:
      - "3001:3000"
      
  node_exporter:
    image: prom/node-exporter:latest
    ports:
      - "9100:9100"

Scaling considerations

Vertical scaling

Start with vertical scaling (bigger hardware) before horizontal:

CPU: More cores improve parser throughput
RAM: Reduces database cache misses
NVMe: Critical for random I/O performance

Horizontal scaling options

For high API traffic:

1Read replicas - PostgreSQL streaming replication
2Load balancing - HAProxy or nginx for API requests
3Caching layer - Redis for hot API responses
4CDN - Cache static inscription content

Next steps

Full sync

Start indexing from genesis block

Archive bootstrap

Quick start using Hiro archives

Configuration

Detailed configuration options