BRK CLI

Run your own Bitcoin Research Kit instance. One binary, one command. Full sync in ~4-7h depending on hardware. ~44% disk overhead vs 250% for mempool/electrs.

bitview.space is the official free hosted instance.

Requirements

Linux or macOS
Bitcoin Core with server=1 in bitcoin.conf
Access to blk*.dat files
~400 GB disk space (see Disk usage)
12+ GB RAM

Disk usage

BRK uses sparse files. Tools like ls -l or Finder report the logical file size (>1 TB), not actual disk usage (~350 GB). Use du -sh to see real usage.

Install

rustup update
RUSTFLAGS="-C target-cpu=native" cargo install --locked brk_cli

Portable build (without native CPU optimizations):

cargo install --locked brk_cli

Run

brk

Indexes the blockchain, computes datasets, starts the server on localhost:3110, and waits for new blocks.

First sync

The initial sync processes the entire blockchain and can take several hours. During this time (more than 10,000 blocks behind), indexing completes before the server starts to free up memory. The web interface at localhost:3110 won't be available until sync finishes.

Options

brk -h       # Show all options
brk -V       # Show version

Command-line options override ~/.brk/config.toml for that run only. Edit the file directly to persist settings:

brkdir = "/path/to/data"
bitcoindir = "/path/to/.bitcoin"

All fields are optional. See brk -h for the full list.

Environment Variables

LOG=debug brk    # Enable debug logging (keeps noise filters)
RUST_LOG=... brk # Full control over log filtering (overrides all defaults)

Files

~/.brk/
├── config.toml   Configuration
└── log           Logs

<brkdir>/         Indexed data (default: ~/.brk)

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