bee-factory

bee-factory is the recommended way to run a local Swarm development environment. It spins up 5 Bee nodes connected to a local Anvil blockchain — all wired together in a single command, with no real xBZZ required.

info

The bee dev command is no longer available. Please use bee-factory for local development instead.

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 18
• Docker

Installation

npm install -g @ethersphere/bee-factory

Usage

bee-factory start               # Start the stack (uses bundled snapshot for fast boot)
bee-factory start --fresh       # Redeploy contracts from scratch, save new snapshot
bee-factory start --tag v2.7.1  # Build Bee from a specific git ref (default: master)

bee-factory stop                # Stop and remove all containers

The --fresh flag redeploys all contracts and saves a new snapshot; subsequent normal starts load from it instantly.

Endpoints

Once running, the nodes are accessible at these addresses:

Node	API	P2P
Queen	http://localhost:1633	http://localhost:1634
Worker 1	http://localhost:11633	http://localhost:11634
Worker 2	http://localhost:21633	http://localhost:21634
Worker 3	http://localhost:31633	http://localhost:31634
Worker 4	http://localhost:41633	http://localhost:41634

Anvil RPC: http://localhost:8545 (chain ID 1337)

Deployed contracts

The following contracts are deployed automatically on startup, with addresses printed to the console:

Contract	Role
BzzToken	ERC-20 BZZ token
PostageStamp	Postage stamp management
PriceOracle	Postage pricing
StakeRegistry	Node staking
Redistribution	Stake redistribution
SimpleSwapFactory	Swap contract factory
SwapPriceOracle	Swap pricing oracle

Notes

• Each node is funded with 1 ETH and 100 BZZ.
• Node password: bee-factory
• Uses Foundry test keys — never use in production.