Peer-to-peer private key

The peer-to-peer (P2P) private key is used to identify the beacon node on the network and secures the information channel between nodes.

When starting Teku, if the --p2p-private-key-file option is not specified, and the generated-node-key.dat file does not exist in the node's data directory, Teku generates a P2P private key and writes it to the generated-node-key.dat file.

If the generated-node-key.dat file exists in the data directory when starting Teku, the node starts using the private stored in the file.

info

The generated-node-key.dat file is stored by default in the <data-beacon-path>/kvstore directory, where <data-beacon-path> is specified using the --data-beacon-path option.