Full Nodes

A Sophon Full Node is a complete node that stores a full copy of the blockchain and can serve as either a sequencer or a validator.

• During the initial phase of the network, only one node, operated by Sophon Labs, is authorized to submit batches.
• However, efforts are underway to allow multiple nodes to collaborate through a consensus mechanism, adhering to the relevant network criteria, which will further decentralize block creation.

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High-level Overview

At a high level, the Full Node consists of the following modules:

• API Server: Provides the publicly available Web3 interface
• Synchronization Layer: Interacts with the main node and retrieves transactions and blocks to re-execute
• Sequencer Component: Executes and persists transactions received from the synchronization layer
• Checker Modules: Ensure the consistency of the ZKsync node state

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Capabilities and Limitations

With the Full Node, you can:

• Locally recreate and verify the Sophon mainnet/testnet state
• Interact with the recreated state in a trustless way
• Use the Web3 API without querying the main node
• Send L2 transactions (proxied to the main node)

However, the Full Node cannot:

• Create L2 blocks or L1 batches independently
• Generate proofs
• Submit data to L1

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Running a Full Node

The process of running a Full Node on Sophon is identical to running one on ZKsync Era. The node can be initialized in two modes:

• Recovery from a DB dump (equivalent to an Ethereum archival node)
• Recovery from a snapshot (equivalent to an Ethereum light node)