Overview
Install Bitcoin Core, Electrs, and a block explorer, then point a desktop wallet at your own node.
With the Pi hardened and Tor humming along, the fun part starts. You'll turn this neat little box into a first-class citizen of the Bitcoin network, a node that validates every block back to the genesis block, indexes every transaction for your own software and hardware wallets, and serves a private block explorer you never have to trust a third party for again.
By the time you finish this section, you'll have:
- Bitcoin Core 30.2 running as a systemd service, syncing the full blockchain, routing outbound through Tor.
- Electrs 0.11.1 indexing the chain for your desktop wallet, no more leaking addresses to public Electrum servers.
- BTC RPC Explorer giving you a private web UI for blocks, transactions, mempool, and fee estimates.
- Sparrow Wallet on your laptop, talking to your own Electrum server over TLS, ready to drive a hardware wallet.
Prerequisites
You've finished the Raspberry Pi section. The
Pi is on the network, SSH is locked to keys, ufw and fail2ban
are on watch, and the Tor daemon is listening on its control port
ready for Bitcoin Core to plug in.
If you want the big picture first, Architecture shows how Bitcoin Core, Electrs, and the block explorer fit together with the rest of the stack.
About the time commitment
The install commands themselves take an afternoon. The blockchain sync is the long pole: on a Pi 5 with a decent SSD, the initial block download runs about two to five days, and Electrs then spends another half day to a day indexing on top of that. Neither step needs babysitting, kick it off, glance at the log once a day, and come back when it's done.
Pages in this section
- Bitcoin client, install Bitcoin Core 30.2, verify the release, tune the config for a Pi 5, start syncing.
- Electrum server, compile Electrs 0.11.1, index the chain, put Caddy in front of it for TLS on the LAN.
- Blockchain explorer, install BTC RPC Explorer on Node.js 22, proxy it through Caddy, view your own chain.
- Desktop wallet, point Sparrow (or an alternative) at your Electrum server, drive a hardware wallet, label UTXOs, take coin control seriously.
When the dust settles, head to the Lightning section to turn this node into a Lightning node as well.
Privacy
Route Bitcoin and Lightning traffic through Tor, then add Tailscale for painless remote access.
Bitcoin client
Install and run Bitcoin Core (bitcoind), GPG-verify the release, tune bitcoin.conf for a Pi 5 (dbcache, maxmempool), and sync the full blockchain (IBD, initial block download) through Tor.