github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum

Using go-ethereum in production requires significant operational maturity. The ethclient package provides solid RPC connectivity with automatic connection handling, but you'll need to implement your own connection pooling layer as the library doesn't provide this out of the box. Memory usage is substantial - expect 2-4GB+ for even moderate workloads due to internal caching and transaction pool management.

Timeout handling is inconsistent across different client methods. Some operations respect context deadlines properly while others don't, leading to unexpected hangs under load. The retry logic is minimal - you'll be writing your own exponential backoff wrappers. Error messages are often cryptic, requiring deep knowledge of EVM internals to debug ("insufficient funds" vs "intrinsic gas too low" scenarios).

Observability is a major pain point. There's minimal structured logging hooks for instrumentation, and metrics are primarily designed for running a full node rather than application-level monitoring. Breaking changes between minor versions happen more frequently than you'd expect, particularly around ABI encoding and transaction signing APIs. The library shines when you need full node capabilities, but for simple RPC operations, lighter alternatives exist.

Go-ethereum (geth) is the official Go implementation of Ethereum and provides comprehensive access to blockchain functionality. The package is feature-complete and production-grade, but the developer experience can be challenging. Documentation is scattered across godoc, the Ethereum wiki, and various blog posts, making it hard to piece together complete examples for common tasks like contract interaction or transaction signing.

The API surface is massive and not always intuitive. Simple tasks like connecting to a node, deploying a contract, or parsing event logs require understanding multiple interconnected packages (accounts, core, ethclient, crypto). Error messages are often low-level and cryptic, especially around transaction failures or ABI encoding issues. You'll spend significant time reading source code and GitHub issues to understand what went wrong.

Community support is decent but fragmented. Stack Overflow has answers for basic questions, but complex issues often require diving into GitHub discussions. The abigen tool for generating contract bindings is helpful but has its own learning curve and quirks around Solidity version compatibility.

Go-ethereum (geth) is the official Go implementation of Ethereum and provides comprehensive functionality for interacting with the blockchain. The package exposes everything from low-level RPC clients to account management and contract interaction via abigen. However, the learning curve is genuinely steep. The documentation assumes substantial blockchain knowledge, and figuring out which of the many packages (ethclient, accounts, crypto, common) to use for basic tasks requires significant trial and error.

Error messages can be cryptic, especially around gas estimation failures and nonce management. When things go wrong, you'll find yourself reading source code frequently. The abigen tool for generating Go bindings from Solidity contracts works well once configured, but the initial setup and understanding of the workflow isn't well-documented. GitHub issues get responses, but many are closed with "works as intended" without much explanation.

Common use cases like sending transactions or reading contract state are achievable but require stitching together examples from various sources. The package is stable and battle-tested in production, but expect to invest significant time upfront understanding its patterns and quirks.