status-im / nimbus-eth2

# Nimbus Eth2 (Beacon Chain)
Nimbus-eth2 is an extremely efficient consensus layer (eth2) client implementation. While it's optimised for embedded systems and resource-restricted devices -- including Raspberry Pis, its low resource usage also makes it an excellent choice for any server or desktop (where it simply takes up fewer resources).
- Documentation
- Quickly test your tooling against Nimbus
- Migrate from another client
- Related projects
- Donations
- Branch guide
- Developer resources
- Tooling and utilities
- For researchers
 - Block simulation
 - Local network simulation
 - Visualising simulation metrics
 - CI setup
- License
## Documentation
You can find the information you need to run a beacon node and operate as a validator in The Book.
The Quickstart in particular will help you quickly connect to either mainnet or the Hoodi testnet.
## Quickly test your tooling against Nimbus
 The Nimbus REST api is now available from:
* http://testing.mainnet.beacon-api.nimbus.team/
* http://unstable.mainnet.beacon-api.nimbus.team/
* http://testing.hoodi.beacon-api.nimbus.team/
* http://unstable.hoodi.beacon-api.nimbus.team/
* http://unstable.sepolia.beacon-api.nimbus.team/
Note that right now these are very much unstable testing instances. They may be unresponsive at times - so **please do not rely on them for validating**. We may also disable them at any time.
## Migrate from another client
This guide will take you through the basics of how to migrate to Nimbus from another client. See here for advanced options.
## Related projects
* status-im/nimbus-eth1: Nimbus execution client
* ethereum/consensus-specs: Consensus specification that this project implements
You can check where the beacon chain fits in the Ethereum ecosystem in our Two-Point-Oh series: https://our.status.im/tag/two-point-oh/
## Donations
If you'd like to contribute to Nimbus development, our donation address is `0x70E47C843E0F6ab0991A3189c28F2957eb6d3842`
## Branch guide
* `stable` - latest stable release - **this branch is recommended for most users**
* `testing` - pre-release branch with features and bugfixes slated for the next stable release - this branch is suitable for use on testnets and for adventurous users that want to live on the edge.
* `unstable` - main development branch against which PR's are merged - if you want to contribute to Nimbus, start here.
## Developer resources
To get started with developing Nimbus itself, see the developer handbook.
## Tooling and utilities
We provide several tools to interact with ETH2 and the data in the beacon chain:
* ncli - command line tool with pretty printers, SSZ decoders, state transition helpers to interact with Eth2 data structures and functions
* ncli_db - command line tool to perform surgery on the Nimbus sqlite database
* multinet - a set of scripts to build and run several Eth2 clients locally
## For researchers
### Block simulation
The block simulator can quickly run the Beacon chain state transition function in isola