Anatomy of Blockchain
Basics of blockchain.
Hello everyone..
Welcome to another day of exploring Web3 Engineering. Let’s dig into basics of the blockchain today and understand it’s anatomy in general. In this blog, we’ll dive into nodes and its types and their responsibilities and use cases. So, without any further ado, let’s get started.
What’s a blockchain node ?
A blockchain node is the vital component of the network that acts as the communication endpoint for the network. The nodes are responsible for maintaining the network’s decentralization and security. These are responsible for performing various tasks such as transaction validation, state broadcasting, data storage etc.,
Key responsibilities
Transaction Validation: Nodes are responsible for validating transactions such as message formatting, gas payments (if needed), data validation etc. They ensure the incoming transactions follows the rules specified by the blockchain.
Block Verification: Nodes perform validations on the new blocks that are added to the network. They also ensure the consensus conformity of the new block.
Data Storage: Depending on the network of the node, they store the blockchain data. If it is a full node, it is responsible to store the entire blockchain, and if it is a light node, it will store the latest copy of the blockchain state.
Network Security: Nodes ensure the blockchain integrity by maintaining a distributed ledger across the network to cross verify the state.
Type of nodes
Depending on the blockchain network, there are different kinds of nodes available. But in general, there are 4 different kinds of blockchain nodes available. They are:
Full node: A full node contains the entire blockchain data and can validate an incoming transaction independently since it contains the entire blockchain data. To run a full node, the storage requirements are usually quite high.
Light node: A light node only store a part of the blockchain data, usually the latest state. They rely on the full nodes for transaction validation.
Archive node: An archive node stores the historic data of the blockchain and doesn’t actively participate in the transaction validation.
Validator node: A validator node participates in the consensus algorithm of the blockchain such Proof-of-Stake , Proof-of-Work etc,.
Depending on the blockchain network and/or consensus algorithm, there are some network specific nodes as well. Some of them are:
Bitcoin
- Miner node: A miner node is a full node which is also responsible for adding new blocks to the network. They participate in the Proof-of-Work (PoW) to solve the complex puzzles in order to generate new blocks.
Ethereum
Full node: An Ethereum full node is not only responsible for storing entire blockchain and also responsible for transaction mining and new block generation. A full node after elected by the PoS election adds the newly generated block to the network.
Validator node: A validator is added in Ethereum 2.0 update where they are responsible for transaction confirmations, block validations and also staking rewards exchange.
Polkadot
Validator node: Polkadot utilizes a hybrid consensus algorithm which includes Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) for relay chain. Validator nodes are responsible for Relay Chains block validation and consensus process.
Collator node: Collator nodes are the block producers for the parachains of the network. Parachain is an individual chain connected to the Main chain (or Relay chain) of the network. They play a critical role in maintaining the scalability of the system.
Tezos
- Baker node: In tezos network, the baker nodes are responsible for network consensus and block creation. These nodes play a key role in maintaining the Liquid Proof-of-Stake (LPoS) consensus over the network.
Depending on the consensus protocol, we can observe full nodes with more responsibilities or new type of nodes with different responsibilities.
That’s all for the day. Feel free to comment down your questions.
