Deploy Surge on Ethereum Sepolia

Deploy your own Surge rollup with real-time proving on Ethereum Sepolia network.

Prerequisites

• An L1 network with HTTP, WebSocket, and beacon chain endpoints (we use Ethereum Sepolia with QuickNode)
• Docker and Docker Compose
• Git
• An L1 account with ETH for gas (deployer private key)
• A separate machine with CUDA-capable GPU for the ZisK prover (see Prover Setup)

1. Clone and Configure

git clone https://github.com/NethermindEth/simple-surge-node.git
cd simple-surge-node
git checkout realtime
cp .env.devnet .env

Edit .env and set your L1 connection:

Variable	Description	Example
L1_ENDPOINT_HTTP	L1 RPC endpoint	https://your-provider.com/rpc
L1_ENDPOINT_WS	L1 WebSocket endpoint	wss://your-provider.com/ws
L1_BEACON_HTTP	L1 beacon chain endpoint	https://your-provider.com/beacon

Everything else in .env.devnet has sensible defaults for a devnet deployment, including pre-funded deployer, operator and submittor keys. For production deployments, override PRIVATE_KEY, OPERATOR_PRIVATE_KEY, and SUBMITTER_PRIVATE_KEY with your own funded accounts.

tip

If running the entire stack with prover, make sure to configure RAIKO_HOST_ZKVM to the prover endpoint. (By default, it's the IP of the VM prover is running on, followed by 8080 port, like http://ip:8080 )

tip

If running the entire stack with prover, make sure to configure RAIKO_HOST_ZKVM to the prover endpoint. (By default, it's the IP of the VM prover is running on, followed by 8081 port, like http://ip:8081 )

2. Run the Deployment

./deploy-surge-full.sh

The script runs interactively through 7 phases:

Phase 1: Environment

Choose local or remote, if you are using a remote VM, please pick remote. (Remote VM highly suggested)

Phase 2: L1 General Protocol Contracts

Deploys RealTimeInbox, SurgeVerifier, Bridge, SignalService, token vaults, Multicall, and UserOpsSubmitter to L1. Also generates L2 genesis, chainspec and prover configuration files.

Phase 3: Prepare Prover

Register prover vkey, make sure the RAIKO_HOST_ZKVM is provided and Set up the ZisK Prover is done with generated prover configuration files from last phase.

Phase 4: L2 Stack

Deploys the L2 execution client (Nethermind), the Driver, and Catalyst. Choose:

• Option 1: Driver only
• Option 2: Driver + Catalyst (default, needed for real-time proving)

Phase 5: Cross Chains DEX Protocol Contracts

Deploys L1_VAULT, L2_VAULT, L2_DEX, L2_TOKEN, and links vaults.

Phase 6: DEX UI

Deploys DEX UI with provided environment variables. (Since DEX UI is build with dynamic configurations, so this process can sometimes take ~10 minutes)

Phase 7: Verification

Runs health checks and prints a deployment summary with all endpoints.

tip

The script saves progress. You can safely cancel with Ctrl+C and resume later.

3. Verify

After deployment:

# Check L2 containers are running
docker compose ps

# Test L2 RPC
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"web3_clientVersion","params":[],"id":1}' \
     http://localhost:8547

If the Driver is running with --fork realtime, you should see blocks being produced once Catalyst starts proposing.

Our Deployment

For reference, here's what we use for the Gnosis mainnet deployment at *.realtime.surge.wtf:

Component	Hardware	Notes
L1	Gnosis mainnet	QuickNode RPC provider
L2 Stack	Standard VM	NMC, Driver, Catalyst
Prover	NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU	Bare-metal Raiko + Zisk (~10-11s proofs)
Secondary prover	L40s GPU cluster	~13-14s proofs

4. Next Steps

• Set up the ZisK Prover for real-time proving (required for block finalization)
• Deploy a dApp on your Surge network

Cleanup

To tear down everything:

./remove-surge-full.sh --force

This removes all containers, data, and configurations. Add --remove-env true to also delete the .env file.