Best electrum server?

[defa1]

I'm looking to install an Electrum server. Only condition is it can be used to serve multiple wallets at the same time so Electrum Personal Server is not an option. Currently I'm looking at Electrumx and Electrs

1. Are there any other projects I should be aware of?
2. Can I use Electrs to serve random users from across the internet like I can with Electrumx?
3. Can I create a Tor hidden service for both? Clearnet is not an option.
4. What are the general benefits and drawbacks for both?

[DaveF]

1. Are there any other projects I should be aware of?

There is also Esplora which is based on Electrs

2. Can I use Electrs to serve random users from across the internet like I can with Electrumx?
3. Can I create a Tor hidden service for both? Clearnet is not an option.

Yes and yes as far as I know.

4. What are the general benefits and drawbacks for both?

There are performance issues with Electrs
https://blog.keys.casa/electrum-server-performance-report/
So depending on use it might not be able to keep up with requests.

For you and just a few users it may or may not matter depending on how much you will be using it.

-Dave

[HCP]

I'm looking to install an Electrum server. Only condition is it can be used to serve multiple wallets at the same time so Electrum Personal Server is not an option. Currently I'm looking at Electrumx and Electrs

1. Are there any other projects I should be aware of?

Aside from Esplora that Dave already mentioned, none that I am aware of.

2. Can I use Electrs to serve random users from across the internet like I can with Electrumx?

Yes, you can... although you're likely to run into performance issues as it isn't really designed to handle huge loads/multiple users. It's more aimed at "personal use" on resource limited hardware (ie. running on a Pi etc)

3. Can I create a Tor hidden service for both? Clearnet is not an option.

Yes you can... indeed, RaspiBlitz sets up electrs behind Tor.

4. What are the general benefits and drawbacks for both?

The short version is:
ElectrumX = more robust (ie. enterprise level), plenty of options to tune, but requires more resources and txindex=1
electrs = more efficient/less resource intensive, doesn't require txindex=1, but better suited to personal use


At the end of the day, I guess it really depends on whether or not you want to allow any random to use your server, or if you're wanting it as a private server.

[defa1]

I want to set up an Electrum server for my desktop and mobile Electrum wallets. If I can offer it over Tor to strangers like a do with Core that's a nice donation to the network. A lot of Electrum servers must be honeypots so it would be great if more trustworthy servers existed.

The question is if I have the hardware run ElectrumX? I have a Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM, do you think this is sufficient hardware to run Electrumx? I doubt I'll get a lot of incoming connections since I'll only be offering it as a hidden service.

Edit: Esplore seems to require 100s of GB of data so that's a no, since my SSD is 1TB and half full already.

[NotATether]

I want to set up an Electrum server for my desktop and mobile Electrum wallets. If I can offer it over Tor to strangers like a do with Core that's a nice donation to the network. A lot of Electrum servers must be honeypots so it would be great if more trustworthy servers existed.

The question is if I have the hardware run ElectrumX? I have a Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM, do you think this is sufficient hardware to run Electrumx? I doubt I'll get a lot of incoming connections since I'll only be offering it as a hidden service.

Edit: Esplore seems to require 100s of GB of data so that's a no, since my SSD is 1TB and half full already.

If you can make the full node run somewhere else then all electrum server choices don't require a lot of resources to run.

So if you have a bitcoin core instance already running like on your personal desktop, you can expose ports on your router and then run the electrum server standalone (assuming you want to run them on different machines, instead of also on the personal desktop) then give the server the ip address and port of Bitcoin Core.

[defa1]

If you can make the full node run somewhere else then all electrum server choices don't require a lot of resources to run.

So if you have a bitcoin core instance already running like on your personal desktop, you can expose ports on your router and then run the electrum server standalone (assuming you want to run them on different machines, instead of also on the personal desktop) then give the server the ip address and port of Bitcoin Core.

That's funky, point my Raspberry Pi with ElectrumX to my desktop and then point my Electrum on my desktop to my Raspberry Pi :-) But that's not what I want to do. I have Bitcoin Core running on my Pi and I would like to run an electrum server on the same device. Do you think my 8GB Pi 4 can handle ElectrumX + Bitcoin Core?

[Rath_]

Do you think my 8GB Pi 4 can handle ElectrumX + Bitcoin Core?

I was trying to set up ElectrumX on a 4 GB Raspberry Pi 4 and I gave up after a week. The initial sync was taking too much time and I ended up building a normal server (the sync took almost 3 days on an SSD and a recent Intel i5 CPU). If you are patient enough and have some solid cooling system then sure.

[DireWolfM14]

Do you think my 8GB Pi 4 can handle ElectrumX + Bitcoin Core?

I was trying to set up ElectrumX on a 4 GB Raspberry Pi 4 and I gave up after a week. The initial sync was taking too much time and I ended up building a normal server (the sync took almost 3 days on an SSD and a recent Intel i5 CPU). If you are patient enough and have some solid cooling system then sure.

I don't have any patience for a Raspberry Pi to do anything remotely taxing.  Even a heatsink kit and fan don't seem to help a lot, but setting up the Pi to boot from a fast USB 3.0 SSD will help some.  Once everything is synchronized it might be fine for a node and ElectrumX, but I've never had a Pi run trouble free for long-term with any demanding tasks.

There are ways to find cheap PCs with i5 processors for about the same price or less than a Raspberry Pi, and realistically they're way more practical for the OP's expectations.

[HCP]

Yeah... I've set a Raspiblitz up with just a standard HDD... I "cheated" and copied the block data over from another node and just the txindexing has taken over 24 hours so far... and it's about 75% done.

The copying of the raw block data took many hours as well (but I can't blame that on the Pi )

There is no denying that the Raspberry Pi's are a nifty devices, but it certainly isn't a processing powerhouse