Terabytes in minutes: Launch Ethereum archive nodes on Chainstack at just $49/month

The ability to deploy a Geth Ethereum archive node in minutes is the latest addition to Chainstack’s managed blockchain services. 

What is an Ethereum archive node? 

Ethereum archive nodes store the full history of the blockchain for the Ethereum mainnet. They work just like a full node but also store an archive of all historical states since the start of the network. At the time of writing, that sits close to 3.75 Terabytes of data (and growing). 

With a full node, you are limited to querying the last 128 blocks to see the balance of an address and the state of a smart contract at a point in time. Furthermore, with the latest Muir Glacier hard fork, the average block time was reduced by ~25% to about 13 seconds per block. This means that full nodes, which make up most nodes on the network, are only able to query data for the last 1,664 seconds, or ~27 minutes. 

Convenience at a cost 

So, with an archive node you can query any block for an address balance or a smart contract state to see what they looked like at a specific point in time. This is a clear necessity for anyone hoping to provide any sort of complete analysis of the Ethereum mainnet.

However, having this option to access any historical state typically comes at a high cost. Not only in the ever-increasing storage requirements, but also in time. It takes weeks to sync an Ethereum archive node and requires constant maintenance of a machine that’s consuming terabytes of storage. Even Vitalik Buterin himself  isn’t running an archive node. 

A guide in how to beat cost and time 

There are a lot of things you can hack through in life today. Cheating time is rarely one of them. But as of today on Chainstack, you can deploy a fully synced, dedicated Ethereum archive node in minutes. Normally this process can take months—it took about three for our first node—and is a massive deterrent for anyone who has considered taking up the task. 

This substantial efficiency gain is made possible by our patent-pending fast synchronization technology called Bolt. At Chainstack, we designed Bolt to maintain up-to-date snapshots of the ledger so that you can benefit from deploying Ethereum nodes in a fraction of the time. 

Additionally, Chainstack’s shared nodes create an instant, private gateway for you to read and write to an archive node. You don’t have to deploy a dedicated node yourself or worry about the increasing storage concerns. These gateways provide you with unlimited access to an archive node just for $49/month—substantially lower cost than existing solutions.  

Try it today 

Both shared and dedicated Ethereum archive nodes are available today on Business or Enterprise subscription tiers. 

Try it out today. You can sign up for a starter Developer plan at console.chainstack.com or learn more on our docs site.

Join our community of innovators

• To learn more about Chainstack, visit our Knowledge Center or join our Discord server and Telegram group.
• Sign up for a free Developer account, or explore the options offered by Growth or Business plans here.
• Take a look at our pricing tiers using a handy calculator to estimate usage and number of nodes.

Have you already explored what you can achieve with Chainstack? Get started for free today.