> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.sophon.xyz/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Full Nodes

> How to run and manage a Sophon full node

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.

<Tip>
  At present, you can only run a **read-only** version of the Full Node. The full size of the
  database at the time of writing is \~1.3TB.
</Tip>

***

## 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

### 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

***

## Running a Full Node

The process of running a **Full Node** on Sophon is identical to running one on ZKsync Era, with the addition of the **Avail Data Availability** layer. You can find more about hardware requirements [here](https://github.com/matter-labs/zksync-era/blob/main/docs/src/guides/external-node/00_quick_start.md#system-requirements).

Clone and follow our [configuration repository](https://github.com/sophon-org/sophon-en-config) to set up your own full node. It can be initialized in two modes:

* Recovery from **DB dumps**
* Syncing fully from **genesis**

### How to set up your avail credentials

In order to be able to configure your node with your own Avail DA, you first need to create an **Avail DA account**. Please check the instructions from the [Avail DA user guide](https://docs.availproject.org/user-guides/accounts).

### Start your node from DB dumps (recommended)

To start your Sophon node from database dumps, you need to enable recovery from snapshots and specify the snapshot location:

```yaml theme={null}
EN_SNAPSHOTS_RECOVERY_ENABLED: "true"
EN_SNAPSHOTS_OBJECT_STORE_BUCKET_BASE_URL: "raas-sophon-mainnet-external-node-snapshots"
```

### Start your node from genesis

To start your Sophon node from genesis, you need to disable recovery from snapshots:

```yaml theme={null}
EN_SNAPSHOTS_RECOVERY_ENABLED: "false"
```

<Warning>
  This is not recommended unless necessary for your use case, as it takes multiple days to sync.
</Warning>

### Local Testing

Following our [configuration repository](https://github.com/sophon-org/sophon-en-config) you can opt to start a local node via **Docker Compose**. For this, we provide you a [start script](https://github.com/sophon-org/sophon-en-config/blob/main/scripts/start_node.sh) that cleans up all Docker artifacts once you exit the process in the terminal (with ctrl+C).

<Tip>
  For an even simpler local testing experience, we recommend setting up an in-memory node and
  forking mainnet using the [ZKsync CLI](../build/interact/zksync-cli).
</Tip>

<Note>
  For detailed info on how to run, configure, and maintain a **Full Node**, see [ZKsync's
  docs](https://matter-labs.github.io/zksync-era/core/latest/guides/external-node/01_intro.html).
  However, for most of the cases, following our [configuration
  repository](https://github.com/sophon-org/sophon-en-config) should be enough.
</Note>