reth

Reth is a software program that connects a computer to the Ethereum blockchain network. Ethereum is a global computing platform where people run applications, trade digital tokens, and sign contracts without a central company in the middle. To participate in that network, a computer needs a piece of software called an execution client, and Reth is one such client, written in the Rust programming language.

The team behind Reth, funded by crypto research firm Paradigm, built it with two priorities in mind: speed and modularity. On the speed side, benchmarks from third-party labs show it processes blockchain history faster than most other Ethereum clients. On the modularity side, every internal component is packaged as a standalone library that developers can import and reuse in their own projects, rather than being locked into one monolithic application.

Reth reached a production-ready milestone in June 2024 after an external security audit, and released version 2.0 in April 2026. That version introduced a new storage format called Storage V2, which takes up less disk space and allows historical blockchain data to be placed on a separate drive. Existing installations using the older format continue to work, but the README notes that support for the old format will eventually be removed.

The project is used in professional settings such as staking (where validators earn rewards for confirming transactions), running public-facing API endpoints for apps that query blockchain data, and MEV (a practice where operators extract value by reordering transactions). It also supports other blockchains that are compatible with Ethereum's virtual machine, so teams building their own chains can use Reth as a starting point.

The code is released under the Apache and MIT licenses, meaning anyone can use, modify, or build on it without paying fees or asking permission. New contributors can find onboarding guides in the repository and get help through a public Telegram group. Building and running tests requires the Rust toolchain and, for the full test suite, the Geth Ethereum client installed separately.