Geth

Geth, short for Go Ethereum, is the Go language implementation of the Ethereum protocol and one of the most widely used Ethereum clients. It is part of the go-ethereum project, maintained by the Ethereum Foundation and a community of contributors. Geth runs a node on the Ethereum network, validating transactions and executing smart contracts, and can operate as a full node, a light node, or an archival node depending on user needs.

The client provides a command-line interface and supports multiple communication methods for external applications, including JSON-RPC, WebSocket, and IPC. Through these interfaces, developers can manage accounts, send transactions, deploy and interact with contracts, and query blockchain state. Geth implements the Ethereum protocol and participates in network consensus by validating blocks and processing transactions according to user-selected settings.

Geth has been developed for both development and production use and has supported numerous Ethereum upgrades and protocol changes. With the Ethereum Merge, it functions as an execution client in conjunction with a separate consensus layer, handling the execution of transactions and contract code while other components manage finality and staking. Geth is cross-platform, available on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and benefits from extensive documentation and ecosystem tooling.

As an open-source project, Geth is integrated into a wide range of infrastructure, wallets, and development workflows, making it a common choice for running Ethereum nodes, research, and applications that require direct interaction with the network.