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If your goal is to get started as quickly as possible, consider a managed service like Neynar instead of running your own node.

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Requirements

  • 16 GB of RAM
  • 4 CPU cores or vCPUs
  • 2 TB of free storage
  • A public IP address with ports 3381 - 3383 exposed

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Sync a node

The easiest way to run Snapchain is using Docker. Once installed, run the following commands in a new folder 
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/farcasterxyz/snapchain/refs/heads/main/scripts/snapchain-bootstrap.sh | bash
Check the docker logs to ensure that the snapshot is being downloaded. 
./snapchain.sh logs

2025-04-16T02:40:11.265909Z  INFO snapchain: Downloading snapshots
2025-04-16T02:40:11.266021Z  INFO snapchain::storage::db::snapshot: Retrieving metadata from https://pub-d352dd8819104a778e20d08888c5a661.r2.dev/FARCASTER_NETWORK_MAINNET/1/latest.json
2025-04-16T02:40:11.637368Z  INFO snapchain::storage::db::snapshot: Downloading zipped snapshot chunk chunk_0001.bin
2025-04-16T02:40:12.952768Z  INFO snapchain::storage::db::snapshot: Downloading zipped snapshot chunk chunk_0002.bin
2025-04-16T02:40:15.305951Z  INFO snapchain::storage::db::snapshot: Downloading zipped snapshot chunk chunk_0003.bin
2025-04-16T02:40:17.742041Z  INFO snapchain::storage::db::snapshot: Downloading zipped snapshot chunk chunk_0004.bin
2025-04-16T02:40:20.720477Z  INFO snapchain::storage::db::snapshot: Downloading zipped snapshot chunk chunk_0005.bin
....
Snapshots are about 200 GB in size and may take a few hours to sync and decompress. Once complete, you should see logs like this: 
2025-04-16T08:20:01.749980Z  INFO node{name=Block}:sync{height.tip=[0] 1875918 height.sync=[0] 1875919}: informalsystems_malachitebft_sync::handle: Requesting sync value from peer height.sync=[0] 1875920 peer=12D3KooWCc28TYrrXFivwUshyZ8R5HqPMgx4f7AP54iCDLYr7kFR
2025-04-16T08:20:01.752425Z  INFO Actor{id="0.7"}: snapchain::consensus::read_validator: Processed decided block height=[0] 1875920 hash="d7a6e107fed6e1e90d4888f4aa2bfb922d9e6950d83c621db0500b15e1caccfe"
It will take a few hours for the node to sync. You can monitor it by running: 
curl localhost:3381/v1/info | jq

# if the nodes are in sync, the blockdelay values for shards should be in the single digits.

{
  "dbStats": {
    "numMessages": 656823920,
    "numFidRegistrations": 1049519,
    "approxSize": 324437755099
  },
  "numShards": 2,
  "shardInfos": [
    {
      "shardId": 0,
      "maxHeight": 1932723,
      "numMessages": 0,
      "numFidRegistrations": 0,
      "approxSize": 1114006028,
      "blockDelay": 5,
      "mempoolSize": 0
    },
    {
      "shardId": 2,
      "maxHeight": 1945363,
      "numMessages": 326936052,
      "numFidRegistrations": 523905,
      "approxSize": 161319650355,
      "blockDelay": 6,
      "mempoolSize": 4294967295
    },
    {
      "shardId": 1,
      "maxHeight": 1966901,
      "numMessages": 329887868,
      "numFidRegistrations": 525614,
      "approxSize": 163118104744,
      "blockDelay": 5,
      "mempoolSize": 4294967295
    }
  ]
}

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Query a node

Once the node is in sync you can start querying it for the latest messages from a user. You’ll need the user’s account id to get their messages. If you don’t have this handy, you can do a lookup by username from the public Farcaster name server. 
# Query for the id associated with the @farcaster account
curl https://fnames.farcaster.xyz/transfers?name=farcaster

{
  "transfers": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "timestamp": 1628882891,
      "username": "farcaster",
      "owner": "0x877...06ed",
      "from": 0,
      "to": 1,
      "user_signature": "0xa6fdd...471b",
      "server_signature": "0xb718...c41b"
    }
  ]
}
The @farcaster user’s account id is 1, and so you can fetch the latest messages by querying the node over its HTTP API: 
curl http://localhost:3381/v1/castsByFid\?fid\=1 \
 | jq ".messages[].data.castAddBody.text \
 | select( . != null)"