Shared Nodes vs Dedicated Nodes

Blockchain Nodes

Crypto APIs Team

Nov 17, 2022 • 4 min

Blockchain nodes are used by developers building decentralized applications (dApps) or applications that require blockchain data. There are two ways they can do this: deploying their own blockchain node or using a blockchain node provider.

Deploying a full blockchain node means being able to cover certain hardware, software and network connection requirements in addition to knowledge and expertise in maintaining them. It’s labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive. It’s not a viable option for many developers, SMEs or even larger enterprises.

Blockchain providers offering Node as a Service offer a much more affordable and efficient alternative. They do this in three ways: giving API access to public nodes, shared nodes or dedicated nodes. What are the differences between them?

What are Blockchain Nodes?

Blockchain nodes are a fundamental part of the blockchain network and ensure its unique characteristics of decentralization and security. Generally speaking, a node is simply any device that acts as a point of connection in a data communication network. The nodes in the network may have different roles but generally they create, receive, store, or send information to the other nodes in the network.

Blockchain nodes are decentralized, connected in a peer-to-peer network in which no single entity has full control. A blockchain node is kind of like a server. It stores the blockchain ledger, shares it with the other network nodes and works to verify and validate the transactional data sent to it.

READ MORE: Blockchain Nodes Explained

What is Node as a Service?

Node as a Service (NaaS) is a more affordable and efficient way for dApps developers to access the blockchain and bypass many of the challenges that comes with connecting to the blockchain. Instead of spending all the time, money and effort setting up, running, securing, and maintaining a node yourself, you can let a node provider do all that for you.

With a Node as a Service provider, you get an API key or an endpoint that enables you to communicate back and forth with fully-synced, up-to-date nodes that are available 24/7.

This gives dApp developers all the benefits of running a full node but without any of the stress or expense of it. You can forget about bandwidth limits, upgrading equipment and ensuring node security. Node providers take care of all of it allowing you to concentrate resources on building and scaling your project.

Node providers can give API access to public nodes, shared nodes or dedicated nodes. Let’s take a look at them in more detail.

Public Blockchain Nodes

Connecting to a blockchain network using public nodes has long been an easy option for dApp developers. Blockchain-based businesses are able to use an API key from a blockchain infrastructure provider and deploy their smart contracts to their preferred blockchain.

Relying on public nodes is fine when you simply want to connect to a testnet before you launch your dApp to end-users or if you want to connect to the mainnet for a small independent project.

But larger scale businesses and projects need a more reliant and secure method to access blockchain nodes.

The popularity of smart contracts and NFTs has been steadily rising, often causing congestion on the blockchain. The growing interest in doing business on blockchains has made blockchains introduce limits on their public nodes to reduce the pressure and ease congestion.

For example, you can send only 5 calls per second to BNB Smart Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain) via Eth-call method.

If you’re developing an on-chain play-to-earn NFT game with hundreds of active players, then this method of accessing nodes is not a suitable option for your project.

Shared Blockchain Nodes

For crypto-related businesses that need greater throughput but have limited resources, connecting to Crypto APIs shared nodes is ideal.

A shared node is a node shared not with the general public, but with other Crypto APIs customers. Although it is shared in the same way the resources of a public node are shared, a Crypto APIs shared node doesn’t have the same amount of traffic as a public node, meaning a much more stable connection.

Shared nodes are ideal for dApps in the early-stage of development. It allows easy access to nodes when you’re ready to stress-test the performance of your dApp or DeFi application.

Dedicated Blockchain Nodes

Dedicated nodes provide high-quality performance as the Crypto APIs shared nodes with the main difference being that the node is all yours.
You still get a super easy, no hassle connection to the public network but with an added layer of security and extra privacy since the node is only accessible to you.

Dedicated nodes work in a similar way to dedicated VPS for cloud computing in that they both have their own nodes for transactions and payments. Using dedicated nodes for blockchain networks dApps can process unlimited requests per second making them an ideal solution for dApps with high-performance, with large amounts of crypto stored, or those dApps looking to scale.

Crypto APIs Node as a Service

Crypto APIs offer nodes to businesses and enterprises of all sizes to help them build dApps faster. Using Crypto APIs shared or dedicated nodes means your developers don’t need to spend precious time syncing, maintaining or managing the nodes themselves.

To learn more about Crypto APIs shared nodes or find out if a Crypto APIs dedicated node is better for your project, contact the team today.

Blog