Anyone who works with, for example, the Ethereum blockchain long enough eventually bumps into a very specific wall: you need to know exactly what happened back then. Not just roughly, not just the transaction logs — you need the actual state of an account or smart contract at some old block height. And that’s the moment most developers discover archive nodes.
At first, they seem like something only deeply specialized infrastructure teams would care about. But once you understand what they unlock, it becomes hard to imagine serious blockchain development without them.
How Node Types Actually Differ and How Node Works
Ethereum runs on a global network of machines that sync new blocks, verify transactions, store blockchain data, and help everyone interact with the network. Light nodes store just enough to participate. Full nodes do the heavy lifting and keep the latest state, along with just enough history to regenerate the most recent 128 blocks.
And then there are archive nodes — the memory-keepers of the entire chain. They store everything: every block, every state, every change, from the first block ever created. If a full node is like a camera that saves only the last few photos, an archive node is the entire photo library going back years, with every deleted shot and every version ever saved.
Full nodes are great for everyday tasks, but the moment you try to query something from deep in the past, they hit a hard limit. They simply weren’t designed to store that much data.
Archive nodes, on the other hand, preserve the entire evolution of the blockchain. They hold the entire trie, every intermediate state, and every detail the network has ever processed. That’s why they matter.
Why Developers Need an Archive Node
Usually it starts with something simple. You’re debugging a contract and need to know what a storage slot looked like 2 million blocks ago. Or you’re building an analytics dashboard and your data pipeline quietly assumes you can access historical state. Or your team is investigating an exploit, and someone asks, “What did the attacker’s balance look like before the event?”
Suddenly, the need for historical precision becomes very real.
An archive node is the only way to answer these questions without relying on third-party indexes or recreating the blockchain state manually. It can tell you any detail about any block, any contract, any account, at any point in time. And it does this instantly — because the data is already stored there, unpruned and untouched.
Once you’ve used one, it’s hard to go back.
The Client Software Behind Ethereum Archive Data
Different Ethereum clients handle archive mode differently, and it influences everything — the database size, the syncing speed, even how pleasant the experience is.
Geth, written in Go, is the most common choice. It’s stable, well-tested, and predictable — but it tends to generate massive database sizes in archive mode.
Erigon (also written in Go) is built with performance in mind. It’s a more modern take on how an Ethereum client should work, and its archive mode is far more storage-efficient. Many teams switch to Erigon specifically because it can handle archive data more gracefully.
OpenEthereum is older and no longer maintained, but it’s worth mentioning because it used to be the fastest way to sync.
No matter the client, the job is the same: store the complete historical data of the chain and allow developers to query anything, anytime.
The Reality of Running an Archive Node
If running a node(for example an Ethereum full node) is like hosting your own website, running an archive node is closer to running your own datacenter. You need high-performance SSDs, terabytes of space, lots of RAM, a strong CPU, and a reliable network connection. And even with great hardware, syncing an archive node can take weeks.
Unlike a full node, running an archive node requires a snapshot since a genesis block. It helps with synchronization every single block since genesis, verifies every transaction, and rebuilds the state at every step. It stores millions of versions of blockchain’s trie, all of which grow continuously as the network evolves.
And the blockchain isn’t getting smaller.
This is why developers who try running an archive node on consumer hardware often give up halfway. It’s not impossible — it just requires more time, storage, and patience than most teams can reasonably dedicate to store a full blockchain history.
Full node vs Archive Node Access: Which is better?
For many developers, the realization comes gradually: a full node is great — until it suddenly isn’t. Full nodes are perfect for staying synced with the network, verifying new blocks, and interacting with smart contracts in real time. But the moment you need to look deeper into the past, they hit a hard limit. A full node simply doesn’t store the historical state you’re looking for.
And that’s where the real trade-off becomes clear. Running an archive node yourself is a massive undertaking. It demands terabytes of SSD storage, weeks of syncing, constant monitoring, and the kind of hardware you don’t casually set up on a spare machine. Maintaining all of that 24/7 quickly turns into a full-time job — one most teams never intended to have.
So instead of pushing full nodes beyond what they’re designed for, and instead of taking on the overhead of running an archive node, many developers choose a provider that gives them instant access to the data they actually need. Through a simple JSON-RPC or web3 endpoint, they can work with any historical state, any block, any account — without hosting anything themselves.
For projects that need archive-level insight but were never meant to operate their own multi-terabyte infrastructure, relying on a provider becomes the far more practical (and frankly, much saner) choice.
How to get a historical information with NOWNodes API
NOWNodes as a node provider offers archive node access designed specifically for teams that want deep historical visibility without the headache of running their own machines. You can use archive nodes through shared access if your workload is moderate, or launch a dedicated archive node if you need maximum performance and privacy.
NOWNodes offers:
- Access to 45+ archive nodes via Shared nodes
- 24/7 support with 3 min SLA directly tech team
- Dedicated Archive nodes – just request a node
- More details here
The platform gives you a stable endpoint, quick responses, full historical data, reliable uptime, and no guesswork about hardware requirements, syncing, or maintenance — everything simply works out of the box.
If your project needs a historical blockchain data, run analytics, debug smart contracts, or explore the earliest parts of the Ethereum chain, NOWNodes gives you immediate access to the full archive. It’s the simplest way to work with historical Ethereum data at scale, without maintaining a multi-terabyte infrastructure of your own.
