Frequently Asked Questions

What hardware do I need to run Firedancer?

A 24-core CPU, 256 GiB RAM, and an SSD with at least 2 TB space.

Refer to the Hardware section in the Getting Started guide for more details.

How can I obtain the Firedancer binaries?

Firedancer does not provide pre-built binaries. Run make -j to build the validator.

It is recommended to build the binaries on the same host where you are planning to run the validator. Firedancer detects system properties and tries to build a binary tuned for the particular host. Take a look at the getting started guide for requirements and instructions.

What branch or tag should I build from?

You should checkout and build from a tagged release. The latest version is v26.10.5. For more information, refer to the releases section.

How do I resolve errors encountered while starting up

Firedancer?

The firedancer binary tries to provide helpful error messages to identify the problem and sometimes even suggests solutions. Take a look at the troubleshooting guide for some easy steps that can mitigate some common issues.

How can I monitor the status of my Firedancer node?

You can use most of the regular monitoring tools and commands that you typically would use with an Agave validator to monitor Firedancer as well. Refer to the monitoring guide for some helpful commands.

What is the difference between Frankendancer and Firedancer?

Firedancer is a fully independent Solana validator.

Frankendancer was a hybrid of the Agave validator and Firedancer's network components. Support for Frankendancer ended when the Alpenglow cluster upgrade is activated on mainnet.