The Mempool Open Source Project™

Mempool is the fully featured visualizer, explorer, and API service running on mempool.space, an open source project developed and operated for the benefit of the Bitcoin community, with a focus on the emerging transaction fee market to help our transition into a multi-layer ecosystem.

Installation Methods

Mempool can be self-hosted on a wide variety of your own hardware, ranging from a simple one-click installation on a Raspberry Pi distro, all the way to an advanced high availability cluster of powerful servers for a production instance. We support the following installation methods, ranked in order from simple to advanced:

1. One-click installation on: Umbrel, RaspiBlitz, RoninDojo, or MyNode.
2. Docker installation on Linux using docker-compose
3. Manual installation on Linux or FreeBSD
4. Production installation on a powerful FreeBSD server
5. High Availability cluster using powerful FreeBSD servers

Manual Installation

The following instructions are for a manual installation on Linux or FreeBSD. The file and directory paths may need to be changed to match your OS.

Dependencies

• Bitcoin
• Electrum
• NodeJS
• MariaDB
• Nginx

Mempool

Clone the mempool repo, and checkout the latest release tag:

  git clone https://github.com/mempool/mempool
  cd mempool
  latestrelease=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/mempool/mempool/releases/latest|grep tag_name|head -1|cut -d '"' -f4)
  git checkout $latestrelease

Bitcoin Core (bitcoind)

Enable RPC and txindex in bitcoin.conf:

  rpcuser=mempool
  rpcpassword=mempool
  txindex=1

MySQL

Install MariaDB from OS package manager:

  # Linux
  apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client

  # macOS
  brew install mariadb
  mysql.server start

Create database and grant privileges:

  MariaDB [(none)]> drop database mempool;
  Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

  MariaDB [(none)]> create database mempool;
  Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

  MariaDB [(none)]> grant all privileges on mempool.* to 'mempool'@'%' identified by 'mempool';
  Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

From the mempool repo's top-level folder, import the database structure:

  mysql -u mempool -p mempool < mariadb-structure.sql

Mempool Backend

Install mempool dependencies from npm and build the backend:

  # backend
  cd backend
  npm install --prod
  npm run build

In the backend folder, make a copy of the sample config and modify it to fit your settings.

  cp mempool-config.sample.json mempool-config.json

Edit mempool-config.json to add your Bitcoin Core node RPC credentials:

{
  "MEMPOOL": {
    "NETWORK": "mainnet",
    "BACKEND": "electrum",
    "HTTP_PORT": 8999
  },
  "CORE_RPC": {
    "HOST": "127.0.0.1",
    "PORT": 8332,
    "USERNAME": "mempool",
    "PASSWORD": "mempool"
  },
  "ELECTRUM": {
    "HOST": "127.0.0.1",
    "PORT": 50002,
    "TLS_ENABLED": true
  },
  "DATABASE": {
    "ENABLED": true,
    "HOST": "127.0.0.1",
    "PORT": 3306,
    "USERNAME": "mempool",
    "PASSWORD": "mempool",
    "DATABASE": "mempool"
  }
}

Start the backend:

  npm run start

When it's running you should see output like this:

  Mempool updated in 0.189 seconds
  Updating mempool
  Mempool updated in 0.096 seconds
  Updating mempool
  Mempool updated in 0.099 seconds
  Updating mempool
  Calculated fee for transaction 1 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 2 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 3 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 4 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 5 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 6 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 7 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 8 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 9 / 10
  Calculated fee for transaction 10 / 10
  Mempool updated in 0.243 seconds
  Updating mempool

Mempool Frontend

Install mempool dependencies from npm and build the frontend static HTML/CSS/JS:

  # frontend
  cd frontend
  npm install --prod
  npm run build

Install the output into nginx webroot folder:

  sudo rsync -av --delete dist/mempool/ /var/www/

nginx + certbot

Install the supplied nginx.conf and nginx-mempool.conf in /etc/nginx

  # install nginx and certbot
  apt-get install -y nginx python3-certbot-nginx

  # install the mempool configuration for nginx
  cp nginx.conf nginx-mempool.conf /etc/nginx/

  # replace example.com with your domain name
  certbot --nginx -d example.com

If everything went okay you should see the beautiful mempool 😁

If you get stuck on "loading blocks", this means the websocket can't connect. Check your nginx proxy setup, firewalls, etc. and open an issue if you need help.