An IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) relayer is an off-chain process responsible for relaying messages between two chains. It is a mandatory actor in the IBC network architecture. This is because blockchains are not passing messages directly to one another over the network. Instead, they create and store the data to be retrieved and used by a relayer to build the IBC messages and subsequently pass them to the destination chain via a dedicated channel.
<aside> ℹ️ This page contains instructions on running a Hermes relayer, a Rust-based implementation. The other two popular but less preferred implementations are TS-based and go-based.
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The relayer service itself is quite lightweight, the nodes are the ones requiring the above-specified hardware requirements.
Before beginning, ensure you have a Nolus full node running in the background. You could relay on the same machine or connect to the Osmosis and Nolus full nodes via a network. You will need build-essential and git installed to follow these instructions.
Download the latest Osmosis binary. Check out https://docs.osmosis.zone/networks/join-mainnet/ for a detailed setup guideline.
Since we are relying on a Rust-based implementation, we would need to install some Rust dependencies first:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf <https://sh.rustup.rs> | sh
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"
sudo apt-get install pkg-config libssl-dev
sudo apt install librust-openssl-dev build-essential git