Stop letting rate-limited third-party RPCs see every address you query. Run your own execution + consensus pair on bare-metal NVMe sized for the 1.4 TB state, with room for an archive node or a staking validator.
Every dapp interaction through a public RPC hands your address, balance queries and mempool intent to an API company. Your own node answers eth_call privately, follows the chain head in real time, and doubles as the backend for a staking validator — no API key, no quota, no logs. Since the merge you run two clients side by side (execution + consensus); since blobs arrived, bandwidth is steady and heavy. The hardware below is sized for that reality, not for 2021 blog posts.
Ethereum state access is random-read heavy; consumer QLC drives choke mid-sync. Datacenter NVMe sustains the IOPS snap sync demands.
Execution caches plus a consensus client comfortably eat 20+ GB. The recommended tiers ship 128 GB — sync faster, prune less often.
A well-peered node moves multiple TB a month post-blobs. Unlimited means unlimited — no validator ever sweats a data cap here.
Staking pays for liveness. Bare metal, redundant power and a 99.9% SLA keep attestation effectiveness where it belongs.
Realistic sizing for a mainnet node in 2026 — chain size, memory, disk and bandwidth. Based on what actually runs in production, not on minimum specs that stopped being true two years ago.
| Client software | Geth / Nethermind + Lighthouse |
|---|---|
| Chain size | ≈ 1.4 TB (EL + CL) |
| Growth per year | ≈ 500 GB / year |
| Recommended RAM | 32 GB |
| Recommended storage | 4 TB NVMe |
| Initial sync | 1–3 days (snap sync) |
| Prunable | ✓ (online pruning) |
| P2P port | 30303, 9000 |
Every plan ships with unlimited bandwidth, NVMe storage and full root access — the three things a node actually consumes. Deploy with a token, pay in the same coin your node secures.
2× 2 TB NVMe: full node with online pruning cycles, 128 GB DDR5 for caches, 16 modern cores — the standard Ethereum box.
4× 2 TB NVMe and EPYC cores: multi-client redundancy, heavy personal RPC, MEV tooling or several L2 nodes beside mainnet.
Erigon/Reth archive (~3 TB and growing) plus full history serving: 16 TB of NVMe and 256 GB ECC absorb years of state growth.
| Location | CPU | RAM | Storage | Uplink | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moldova Budget Offshore | 16C / 32T AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (4.5 GHz) |
128 GB DDR5 | 2x 2TB NVMe | 5 Gbps | $87.50/mo | Order |
| Russia Western-Proof | 16C / 32T AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (4.5 GHz) |
128 GB DDR5 | 2x 2TB NVMe | 5 Gbps | $87.50/mo | Order |
| Panama No Data Retention | 16C / 32T AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (4.5 GHz) |
128 GB DDR5 | 2x 2TB NVMe | 5 Gbps | $97.50/mo | Order |
| Romania Anti-Retention | 16C / 32T AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (4.5 GHz) |
128 GB DDR5 | 2x 2TB NVMe | 5 Gbps | $97.50/mo | Order |
| Netherlands Best Peering | 16C / 32T AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (4.5 GHz) |
128 GB DDR5 | 2x 2TB NVMe | 5 Gbps | $102.50/mo | Order |
| Iceland Free Speech Haven | 16C / 32T AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (4.5 GHz) |
128 GB DDR5 | 2x 2TB NVMe | 5 Gbps | $112.00/mo | Order |
| Switzerland Premium Privacy | 16C / 32T AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (4.5 GHz) |
128 GB DDR5 | 2x 2TB NVMe | 5 Gbps | $122.00/mo | Order |
Need more disk, RAM or a custom RAID layout for your node? Contact →
From order to synced node. Commands are copy-paste ready for Ubuntu 24.04 — adapt paths if you run Debian or Rocky.
DS-2 minimum for mainnet. Pick Netherlands or Romania for European peering, Switzerland for the validator you never want subpoenaed.
Key-only SSH, firewall allowing 30303 and 9000, and accurate time sync (chrony) — attestations care about clocks.
Geth, Nethermind or Reth — download, verify checksums, install. One binary, no dependencies.
wget https://gethstore.blob.core.windows.net/builds/geth-linux-amd64-1.16.0.tar.gz
tar xzf geth-linux-amd64-1.16.0.tar.gz && install -m 0755 geth-linux-amd64-1.16.0/geth /usr/local/bin/Generate the JWT secret, start the execution client, then the consensus client with checkpoint sync — you're following the head in minutes while snap sync backfills state.
openssl rand -hex 32 > /root/jwt.hex
geth --mainnet --http --authrpc.jwtsecret=/root/jwt.hex &
lighthouse bn --network mainnet --execution-endpoint http://127.0.0.1:8551 \
--execution-jwt /root/jwt.hex --checkpoint-sync-url https://mainnet.checkpoint.sigp.io &Once eth.syncing returns false, point wallets and scripts at your own RPC over SSH or WireGuard. Optionally add a validator client with your staking keys.
geth attach --exec 'eth.syncing'
curl -s localhost:5052/eth/v1/node/syncing | jqMid-2026 reality: a full node (execution + consensus) occupies ~1.4 TB after a fresh snap sync and grows ~40–50 GB a month, so 4 TB of NVMe buys years of calm; 2 TB works with regular online pruning. RAM: 32 GB is the practical floor, more becomes cache. CPU: 8+ modern cores; sync is disk-and-network bound, steady state is light. Archive nodes are a different animal — ~3 TB on Erigon or Reth and climbing — which is exactly what the Archive tier mapping is for.
Public RPCs rate-limit you, log you, and go down during the exact volatility you needed them for. A DS-2 running Geth serves your bots, dapps and analytics with zero quota — eth_getLogs over months of history, batched eth_call, WebSocket subscriptions — while staying private. Heavy indexing? DS-3's four NVMe drives and EPYC cores run an Erigon + TrueBlocks stack that would cost hundreds monthly at a commercial API.
A validator is a consensus-client sidecar plus your keys: no extra hardware beyond the full node it rides on. What changes is the stakes — offline means leaking ETH. Bare metal with SLA-backed uptime, ECC memory and no hypervisor between you and the disk is the professional setup. Keys are generated by you, held by you; we rent silicon, not custody. Run one validator or a hundred — the node is the same box.
Blob sidecars made Ethereum nodes chatty: multiple terabytes a month is normal for a well-peered node. That's a rounding error on our unmetered plans and a bill-shock generator anywhere else. And because an RPC endpoint reveals every address you care about, hosting it under a token in Iceland or Switzerland — instead of under an account with your card on file — removes the easiest deanonymization vector in the stack.
DS-2 at $87.50–122/mo covers a full node with pruning cycles comfortably. RPC-heavy workloads sit on DS-3 from $146.50/mo. An archive node needs DS-4 (from $220/mo, 16 TB NVMe). Unlimited traffic included in all cases.
Checkpoint sync brings the consensus client to the head in minutes; snap sync backfills execution state in 1–3 days on our NVMe. Archive syncs are a different order — plan 1–3 weeks on DS-4 depending on client.
Any of them — and running a minority client helps the network. Geth is the battle-tested default, Nethermind is strong on tooling, Reth is the performance pick for archive work. The hardware mapping doesn't change.
Yes — add a validator client to the full node. Your keys never touch us. For serious stakes pick the Performance tier and Switzerland or Iceland; attestation effectiveness on bare metal typically sits above 99%.
They're ordinary Linux processes that need an L1 RPC — which you now own. DS-3 comfortably runs mainnet plus two or three L2 full nodes; each adds a few hundred GB.
Yes — a node is protocol participation, not a financial service. Staking your own ETH is self-custody. What you build on top follows the laws that apply to you, as always.
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Bare-metal NVMe, 128 GB RAM, unlimited blob-era bandwidth. Deploy with a token, pay in ETH, sync this week.