From Day 1, Flow has been on a path of progressive decentralization. To date, we’ve made incredible progress and have achieved decentralization as follows:
- Since last October, Flow community validators are currently operating 68% of the total consensus nodes.
- In April, Flow debuted its first ever community governance vote, introducing a new dynamic transaction fee structure that lowered fees for most transactions.
- In July, Flow opened up permissionless smart contract deployment to all, with the release of Secure Cadence, a major upgrade to Flow’s revolutionary smart contract programming language (Cadence).
- All while powering web3 experiences from Fortune 500 companies like Google and Meta, to startups collectively raising more than $4B. To date, Flow has 13 million accounts, 2 million monthly active transacting users and 8,000+ developers building on Flow.
Today, we are announcing one big step in that direction: anyone can now run a Flow node. We are excited to introduce a new permissionless node type called an Observer node: an unstaked node that runs on consumer grade hardware, and provides a locally accessible, continuously updated, verified copy of the block data. Learn more about how to run an Observer node.
Our progress with permissionless node operation is just beginning. We have other exciting milestones coming up by the end of this year. Permissionless deployment of staked nodes will start with Access nodes by the end of the year, with other node types to become permissionless in 2023 and beyond.
Furthermore, an additional specialized node type, called an Archive Node, will also be available by the end of the year. Archive nodes provide access to historical data which is no longer accessible via regular access nodes, as well as to be able to run Cadence scripts without being subjected to rate limits. The Archive node is a result of a community contribution from Optakt, and will also be permissionless. See our full length forum post for more details.
| Milestone Schedule |
Date |
Status |
| Observer node launch |
August 2022 |
Launched |
| Launch of permissionless access node |
October 2022 |
In progress |
| Completion of pen testing |
Late H2, 2022 |
In progress |
| Second set of permissionless access node slots |
Late H2, 2022 |
In progress |
| Archive Node |
Late H2, 2022 |
In progress |
| Access node and Observer node integration with the archive node to query the archival node for state-related queries (account, events etc.) and to execute scripts |
Late H2, 2022 |
In progress |
| Launch of permissionless deployment for other staked node types |
2023 and beyond |
Not Started |
With the introduction of the permissionless Observer node, the network unlocks participation opportunities for everyone. Having your own node means you don't need to trust information about the state of the network provided by a third party, including other benefits such as privacy, security, reduced reliance on third-party servers, censorship resistance, balanced load distribution, and increased decentralization of the network.
TL;DR
- Introducing Observer nodes: a new node type that anyone can run on consumer grade hardware. Run an Observer node to keep a locally accessible, continuously updated and verified copy of the block data.
- Running staked Access nodes will also be fully permissionless by this year, with other staked node types to become permissionless in 2023 and beyond.
- For particular memory-intensive operations, a new node type, called the Archive Node, will be introduced by the end of the year. The Archive node is a result of a community contribution from Optakt, and will also be fully permissionless.
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