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Harmony's Open Development
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Harmony Network and Services

Network Nodes

  1. Bootnode: Bootstraps all the nodes in the network
    1. When running up a new node, gives sets of nodes to connet to
    2. Very cheap to host; expected to be ~$500 per year after migrating from AWS
    3. Long term: Harmony to maintain as it is a critical service and cheap to host

  1. Validator nodes: Nodes in the network to sign blocks and add them to the chain
    1. Harmony has 4 shards and each shards have different sets of validator nodes (5 validators per shard)
    2. As of Jan 9: 16 of 20 nodes have been migrated from AWS → Hetzner / Latitude
      1. Expected overall cost = $1779 / month (Does it align with spreadsheet)
    3. As of Jan 23: 20 of 20 nodes have been migrated from AWS → Hetzner / Latitude / Digital Ocean
    4. Long term: Fully shutdown 20 node (would require a few hardforks)

  1. RPC nodes: Entrypoint to the network
    1. Entrypoint for querying information on blockchain or writing information (transactions)
    2. Made up of ERPC and legacy RPC nodes
    3. Currently migrating from ERPC to RPC
    4. Long term: Shutdown ERPC and fully transition to RPC nodes

  1. Sync / DNS nodes: Nodes used for syncing the nodes
    1. Very costly because of:
      1. Bandwidth: All nodes download block from sync nodes
      2. Storage
    2. Many of the nodes have been migrated from AWS → Hetzner / Latitude
      1. Estimated savings from $1.2k → $200 per month
      2. Planning on migrating the rest to the new providers
    3. Long term: Once streamsync is fully functional, terminate the nodes

  1. Snapshot node: Nodes being used to store backup of database
    1. Made available in decentralized storage
    2. Speeds up the process of syncing of new nodes (used alongside w/ sync node)

  1. Archival node: Actual database of all the data (i.e. balance of account in all the blocks)
    1. Currently at 22 TB / 32 TB (per node)
    2. 4 nodes in different data center
    3. Need to keep a clean copy since it is very expensive

Exposed Services

  1. Explorer dashboard
  2. Staking dashboard
  3. Graph node

Harmony Networks

  1. Mainnet
    • Primary public Harmony production blockchain
  2. Testnet
    • Primary purpose is to allow partners and developers to develop and test prior to releasing to Mainnet
    • Public network along with Mainnet
    • Follows the release versions of Mainnet
  3. Devnet
    • Used by the protocol team for protocol development and testing
    • Not exposed to the public