Cosmos_full_node

Chapter 15: Cosmos Full Node Setup

Overview

A full node in Cosmos stores the complete blockchain history and validates all transactions but doesn’t participate in block production like validators.

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15.1 Full Node vs Validator

Aspect	Full Node	Validator
Block Production	No	Yes
Staking Required	No	Yes (ATOM)
Can Be Jailed	No	Yes
Hardware	Less resources	High resources
Use Case	RPC, indexing	Consensus

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15.2 Setup Full Node

Install Gaiad

# Install Go first, then:
git clone https://github.com/cosmos/gaia.git
cd gaia
make install

Initialize Node

# Initialize
gaiad init my-full-node --chain-id cosmoshub-4

# Download genesis
wget -O ~/.gaia/config/genesis.json \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cosmos/mainnet/master/genesis.json

Start Node

# Basic start
gaiad start

# With seeds
gaiad start \
  --seeds="seed@node:26656" \
  --p2p.persistent_peers="peer@node:26656"

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15.3 RPC Configuration

Enable RPC

~/.gaia/config/config.toml

[rpc]
laddr = "tcp://0.0.0.0:26657"

Common RPC Commands

# Get status
curl http://localhost:26657/status

# Get block
curl http://localhost:26657/block?height=10000

# Get validators
curl http://localhost:26657/validators

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15.4 Pruning

Configure Pruning

~/.gaia/config/app.toml

[pruning]
pruning = "default"
pruning-keep-recent = "100"
pruning-keep-every = "500"

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15.5 State Sync

Quick Sync

# Enable state sync
gaiad start --statesync.enable --statesync.rpc_servers="server1,server2" --statesync.trust_height=12345 --statesync.trust_hash=abc

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Summary

• Full nodes don’t stake but validate transactions
• RPC on port 26657
• Can enable state sync for faster setup
• Prune old data to save storage

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Next Chapter

In Chapter 16: Cosmos RPC & API Configuration, we’ll explore Cosmos APIs.

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Last Updated: 2026-02-20