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This guide will explain how to install the gaiad binary and run the cli. With this binary installed on a server, you can participate on the mainnet as either a Full Node or a Validator.

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Build Requirements

At present, the SDK fully supports installation on linux distributions. For the purpose of this instruction set, we’ll be using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. It is also possible to install gaiad on Unix, while Windows may require additional unsupported third party installation. All steps are listed below for a clean install.
  1. Update & install build tools
  2. Install Go
  3. Install Gaiad binaries

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Build Tools

Install make and gcc. Ubuntu: 
sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y make gcc build-essential

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Install Go

Go 1.23+ is required.
We suggest the following two ways to install Go. Check out the official docs and Go installer for the correct download for your operating system. Alternatively, you can install Go yourself from the command line. Detailed below are standard default installation locations, but feel free to customize. Since the introduction of CosmWasm in Gaia v18 it is recommended to build the binaries with CGO enabled - simply set CGO_ENABLED=1 in your terminal before building the binary. Building the gaiad binary on Windows is not supported due to dependency issues. Go Binary Downloads Ubuntu: At the time of this writing, the latest release is 1.23.6. We’re going to download the tarball, extract it to /usr/local, and export GOROOT to our $PATH 
curl -OL https://go.dev/dl/go1.23.6.darwin-amd64.tar.gz

sudo tar -C /usr/local -xvf go1.23.6.darwin-amd64.tar.gz

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
Remember to add GOPATH to your $PATH environment variable. If you’re not sure where that is, run go env GOPATH. This will allow us to run the gaiad binary in the next step. If you’re not sure how to set your $PATH take a look at these instructions. 
export PATH=$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin

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Install the binaries

Next, let’s install the latest version of Gaia. Make sure you git checkout the correct released version. 
git clone -b <latest-release-tag> https://github.com/cosmos/gaia.git
cd gaia && make install
If this command fails due to the following error message, you might have already set LDFLAGS prior to running this step. 
flag provided but not defined: -L
usage: link [options] main.o
...
make: *** [install] Error 2
Unset this environment variable and try again. 
LDFLAGS="" make install
NOTE: If you still have issues at this step, please check that you have the latest stable version of GO installed.
That will install the gaiad binary. Verify that everything installed successfully by running: 
gaiad version --long
You should see something similar to the following: 
name: gaia
server_name: gaiad
version: v18.0.0
commit: 682770f2410ab0d33ac7f0c7203519d7a99fa2b6
build_tags: netgo,ledger,muslc
go: go version go1.23.6 linux/amd64

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Docker

Dockerfile is available in the gaia repo. Building: 
git clone -b <latest-release-tag> https://github.com/cosmos/gaia.git
cd gaia
docker build -t cosmos-ics:local -f Dockerfile ./

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Static linking

In case you need to build a binary with all dependencies statically linked please check our Dockerfile. You must have libwasmvm available on your machine. Choose the build that matches your platform and OS: For more information, please check wasmvm documentation.

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Build Tags

Build tags indicate special features that have been enabled in the binary.
Build TagDescription
netgoName resolution will use pure Go code
ledgerLedger devices are supported (hardware wallets)
static_wasm/muslcUsed for statically linked wasmd dependencies

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Work with a Cosmos SDK Clone

To work with your own modifications of the Cosmos SDK, make a fork of this repo, and add a replace clause to the go.mod file. The replace clause you add to go.mod must provide the correct import path. 
go mod edit -replace github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk=../cosmos-sdk
go mod tidy
make install # or make build

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Next

Now you can join the mainnet, the public testnet.