Build your own do-everything-yourself Bitcoin full node.
Become a sovereign peer in the Bitcoin and Lightning network, on a small, cheap Raspberry Pi sitting in the corner of your room.
No need to trust anyone else.
There are plenty of reasons to run your own node.
Any one of these is enough. Combined, they're hard to argue with.
Keep Bitcoin decentralized
Your node helps enforce Bitcoin's consensus rules. Every additional full node makes the network harder to capture.
Take back your sovereignty
Your node validates your own transactions. No third-party tells you what happened on-chain, you check for yourself.
Improve your privacy
Connect your wallets directly to your own node and stop broadcasting your financial history to external servers.
Be part of Lightning
Run a Lightning node for everyday payments and help build a robust, decentralized payment network on top of Bitcoin.
Did we mention that it's fun, as well?
A complete self-sovereignty stack.
Standard Debian Linux commands throughout, so the guide also works on other hardware and cloud servers. The core is carefully maintained and kept up to date.
Bitcoin Core
Direct, trustless participation in the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network. Every block and every transaction, validated by you.
Electrum server
Connect your own wallets (including hardware wallets) to your own node instead of a stranger's.
Blockchain Explorer
Private, local block and transaction lookup. No information leaks to third-party explorers.
Lightning
Full Lightning node with long-term channels, plus web and mobile management interfaces.
Always on, always synced
Services stay available 24/7, quietly keeping themselves up to date while you sleep.
Reachable from anywhere
A Tailscale mesh VPN lets you reach the Pi from any device, anywhere, no open ports, no dynamic DNS.
Foolproof instructions, no shortcuts.
The goal is to do everything yourself. Shortcuts that involve trusting someone else aren't allowed here, that's the whole point.
This makes the guide technical, but the path is as straightforward as we can make it. Along the way you'll pick up a working understanding of Linux, Bitcoin, and Lightning, not because you have to memorize it, but because you'll actually use it.
If you enjoy tinkering, care about self-sovereignty, and have a weekend to spare, this guide is for you.
You're not alone.
RaspiBolt started in 2017 as a Medium post. It has grown into a community project with many contributors, thousands of nodes running in the wild, and help available wherever Bitcoiners gather.
Ready to build your own?
Grab a Raspberry Pi, a 2 TB SSD, and a weekend. Start with the preparations chapter, we'll take it from there.