blockchain//node

A node is a participant that keeps a copy of the blockchain, and nodes differ in how much state they store and how much they verify themselves. A full node re-executes every transaction in each received block to check that the state hash matches; if the computed hash differs from the one the proposer claimed, the block is rejected and discarded, and the node waits for a valid one.

A node is a participant that keeps a copy of the blockchain, and nodes differ in how much state they store and how much they verify themselves. A full node re-executes every transaction in each received block to check that the state hash matches; if the computed hash differs from the one the proposer claimed, the block is rejected and discarded, and the node waits for a valid one.

Full nodeStores the current state, prunes old intermediate states and validates everything independently

Archive nodeStores a state snapshot after every block, so it can query historical balances at any point, and is much larger

Light clientDoes not sync the full chain and trusts an RPC node (such as Infura) for instant data access

Which kind a node becomes is decided by its sync mode, a tradeoff between trust, storage and startup time.