Blockchain node hosting

Size for the chain, not for the marketing

Most node hosting pages quote requirements that were accurate three years ago. As of mid-2026 the Bitcoin blockchain is around 750 GB and grows roughly 60 GB a year. A pruned node with prune=550 validates everything but keeps only the recent blocks, and fits in 60 GB.

Ethereum is the demanding one. Post-merge you run an execution client and a consensus client side by side; Geth plus Lighthouse with default settings needs about 1.4 TB and grows steadily. An archive node needs upwards of 15 TB and belongs on a dedicated server.

Solana is in a category of its own. A voting validator wants 256 to 512 GB of RAM and enterprise NVMe with high sustained write endurance, and running one on a VPS will not work regardless of what the plan page says.

Why disk endurance matters more than disk speed

Nodes write constantly. Consumer NVMe with a low terabytes-written rating will degrade in months under a Solana or Ethereum workload — this is the most common way a self-hosted node dies. Every NVMe on our network is enterprise-grade with high sustained-write endurance, and on dedicated servers you can see the exact model in the specification.

The other thing people underestimate is initial sync. A Bitcoin node takes one to three days to sync from scratch, Ethereum three to seven with snap sync. Unmetered transfer matters here as much as it does afterwards.

Privacy considerations for node operators

Running your own node is itself a privacy measure — it removes the third-party server that would otherwise learn every address you query. Combining it with a jurisdiction that does not log and does not require identity closes the remaining gap.

For Monero specifically, running your own node is close to mandatory if you care about the privacy properties. A remote node sees the transactions you look up, which undoes a meaningful fraction of what Monero provides.