For a developer or a business, deploying your own blockchain node is easier said than done. Nodes are a vital step in the Web3 stack and getting it ‘right’ from day one can change the landscape of your business.
When you set out to evolve your Web2 company into a Web3 enterprise, you will inadvertently face the question “how to deploy a blockchain node?” sooner or later, and there are two ways to answer this question.
One is running a node on your own, and the other is hiring a node service to take care of end-to-end operations.
When you consider the merits and drawbacks of both questions, it becomes immediately evident that the latter is the only wiser route to take. Here’s why.
What are the benefits of using a node service?
- Maintenance: Managing & maintaining your own nodes is a team effort as the nodes must run throughout the day & night. So node service providers take care of these functions that are vital to any client/organization.
- Product focus: If you’re building a product and need nodes, keeping the end-to-end infrastructure up & running will be a task. By hiring a node service provider, you can focus on building your product without worrying about infrastructure maintenance.
- Price factor: If you think building nodes on your own is cheaper, you will meet with a rude awakening why it’s the opposite. When you consider all the points mentioned here, node providers offer holistic services at a significantly cheaper subscription price.
- Incident resolutions: node services provide dedicated developers who work around the clock to respond to and recover network incidents at the earliest. A support system like this is out of the question when you deploy your own node.
- Combat downtime: Node services like Zeeve have strategically positioned nodes across the globe, in every continent to avoid & combat downtime. When an enterprise deploys blockchain nodes on its own, there is no other way but to wait until the network recovers from the downtime on its own.
- Cloud services: When an enterprise deploys a node, hosting it on a cloud is a must and generally, this is an expensive affair as well. But when you subscribe to a node service, it not only offers BYOC (bring your own cloud) options like AWS & Digitalocean but provides a service-managed cloud (Zeeve Managed cloud).
Now that the benefits of using a node service are crystal clear, let’s dive in to learn how to deploy a node in minutes on Zeeve.
In this example, we will be creating a Polygon node on a Zeeve-managed cloud.
Step 1: Sign up and familiarize the interface
To begin with, visit the link app.zeeve.io/auth/signup, sign up to Zeeve by providing the requested details, and check the reCAPCHA.
Once you sign up, familiarize yourself with the interface which should look something like this.
Step 2: Selection
The second step is to select “dedicated nodes” to the left and then select “polygonPoS,” at the bottom, which should take you to the subscription options.
Step 3: Select subscription options
Here, you may feel free to bring your own cloud (BYOC) or select Zeeve Managed Cloud, and then select the type of node you wish to subscribe to (full/archive/staking).
After selecting, click subscribe which will take you to the payment page, where you can add all the details, and payment information, and subscribe.
Step 4: Setting up network/node
Once subscribed, you will be directed to the next page where you can select the Setup Network/Node option, and Add Network on the following page, as shown in the images below.
Step 5: Configure your node
As soon as you Add Network, you will find your polygonPoS node ready to be configured as shown below. You can click on this and move on to create a network in the next step.
Step 6: Create a network
You can now create a network by naming your network first, selecting the type of network (Mumbai is the name of Polygon’s testnet shown in the picture), selecting deployment type (native polygon deployment), and at last selecting the workspace.
As you are creating a workspace for the first time, you can create it on the default workspace, and create new workspaces as you build more nodes or endpoints.
Step 7: Creating BOR endpoints
As shown in the image below, add a new username, and password that contains only alphanumerics, name your node and provide your email address.
This is required for the network to send essential data to your email ID.
Make sure to enable both https and WSS in the RPC server to create endpoints, and the essential JSON RPC APIs are ticked by default.
Upon completion, click Next Step, and you will see a pop that says Network Created Successfully.
Now click continue and then create which will take you to step 8.
Step 8: The final outcome
When you click create, you can finally see the node that you created (TestPolygon1), and you can then click on View Endpoint and scroll down to see the https and Web Socket endpoints that are created.
Step 9: Interacting with your node
After completing all the steps, it’s now time to interact with your new node and you can do so with a simple cURL. This cURL will interact with your RPC endpoint and obtain a result.
To do this, go to the Command Line Interface (CLI) like Terminal, and create a directory at a location of your choice.
Next, install cURL by running the following command.
npm install curlOnce the cURL is installed, you can have your first interaction by running the following command.
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/JSON" --data \ '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_blockNumber","params":[],"id":1}' \This will invoke the eth_blockNumber which provides you the latest block number as a result value as seen below:
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"result":"0x1bb6110"}You have successfully interacted with your node for the first time.
Wrapping up:
Congrats on deploying your first blockchain node within minutes and interacting with it successfully. Zeeve is a platform that not only supports public protocols like Polygon, Avalanche, Binance, and Polkadot but permissive protocols like R3Corda and Hyperledger Fabric as well.
So feel free to make the most of any product or protocol offered on the platform.
