Quicknode

February 18, 2019 — 6 min read

Fastest, Reliable and Trusted Ethereum Nodes

Quicknode offers the fastest Ethereum Nodes. With Quicknode you can save your developer time without compromising on Node quality or performance. In this article, we will help you to understand why you should use Quicknode.

High Volume, Fast Transaction

Quicknode infrastructure provides Ethereum nodes with powerful resources and high Internet bandwidth. 8 different zones are supported to minimize network hops and improve latency. With your own Quicknode you can batch multiple transactions and push more transactions in a block compared to any public node.

Peers

Ethereum is a decentralized network, where nodes connect other peer nodes, forming a peer-to-peer network to communicate with each other. With Quicknode, your node will have an optimum number of peers it finds on Ethereum network (up to 50 at a time), which helps propagate your transaction to the network faster and keep your node in sync to the latest block.

You can see the number of peers connected to your node on Quicknode’s dashboard and also IPs and other client information of those peer nodes.

Scalability and Load

Public nodes typically throttle with heavy usage. With Quicknode, your Ethereum node is only yours and has no set limits. This is very important for a scalable Dapp/App. Your Quicknode tackles only your Dapp/App load hence improving your Dapp’s user experience. Additionally, Quicknode’s engineers fine-tune your Ethereum node for maximum throughput and performance.

Security and Privacy

At Quicknode, security is of utmost priority. Let’s explore some of the benefits:

• Your node is accessed through a link only shared with you, hence removing user login for accessing your node. To enhance privacy, we don’t track a particular user.

• As a user, you don’t need to concern yourself about security as our security engineers take care of this for you.

• Quicknode uses HTTPS and WSS to increase security.

• As a business, if you run your own node into your subnet, then you don’t want to allow any unknown IP (Peer Node) into your network. Using Quicknode you don’t need to worry about this problem.

Maintenance

Ethereum clients such as Parity and Geth are in active development and frequently release new versions. If you run an Ethereum node, you need to upgrade it every time to keep up with the latest patches and features.

Quicknode solves this problem for its users. The team continuously monitors updates relevant to your node and applies them automatically. Quicknode engineers also watch for forks and take actions accordingly to safeguard users. This saves a lot of time for you as a developer so you can focus on your application.

Analytics

Quicknode provides awesome analytics for your Ethereum Node. As mentioned above, the metrics UI shows the number of peers connected to your node. Let’s have a quick look at what else you get with Quicknode analytics:

• Node Logs

• Average Load on the Node

• # of Requests on the Node

• # of Connections

• WebSocket Messages

• Block Number

Flexibility

Quicknode supports all mainstream networks (MainNet, Rinkeby, Ropsten, Kovan, Classic) and clients (Geth, Parity), which provides immense flexibility.

You can spin up an Ethereum Node on any network and client, and plug it into your application using a Web3 URL (a hashed https:// and wss:// URL is provided inside the UI) in minutes.

One can also change networks, clients, and locations with a few clicks. For example, one can launch a Ropsten node on Parity client in Bangalore for development, then switch to MainNet in Amsterdam for production. This saves a lot of time and helps in the testing of your application!

Reliability

The Quicknode team has been building & maintaining IT infrastructure since the early 2000s (over 40 years combined experience). This helps in creating a safe and reliable Ethereum Node infrastructure. Using the most trusted cloud platforms available today, Quicknode maximizes Ethereum Node uptime, ensures swift deployment and fast network connectivity for best performance.

Ethereum Network Security

Running a node helps expand and strengthen the network. More nodes = more copies of the blockchain that exist, which also means more peers to distribute block data. Every Quicknode customer is helping himself and at the same time helping make the Ethereum network faster and more immutable.

Ethereum Archive Node

Quicknode also provides Parity Ethereum Archive Nodes. An Archive Node contains all state trie data (all the transaction records that have ever happened) and is generally deployed by advanced users & businesses who need the full blockchain data to play around with — fast.

Normally these Nodes take weeks to sync, however, one can spin up an Archive Node with full Trace Module Data in just a couple of hours!

Quicknode Wallet

Also included with your Node is a standalone Wallet web-app. The interface is a fork of the popular MyEtherWallet. Using the integrated Quicknode Wallet, you can do things such as sending Ether and ERC20 tokens, signing a transaction, generating a raw transaction, or buying an ENS domain — which helps both power-users (for interacting with the blockchain) and developers (for testing and smart-contract deployment).

This is how it all looks:

And these are just some of the hundreds of projects using Quicknode today:

Is it worth it?

You’re probably wondering how much a Quicknode is. First, just think about how much time and effort you will expend setting everything up (e.g. a cloud account; the requisites and node software using the command line; firewall and security; etc…). Then how long it will take to tune the environment to make it stable and perform at the highest level (e.g. OS kernels, network settings, node config files, etc…). Then, who will maintain it all (updates, forks, crashes, bugs, expanding chain size, etc…)? It’s a full time job!

Quicknode saves a lot of time for development teams so they can always focus on application building!

Quicknode makes the Node layer virtually invisible for around $150/month. 7-day terms are also available (for those looking to test things first), as well as 3, 6, and 12-month terms at discounts of 10%, 15%, and 20% — respectively. You can add time to your node whenever you want, inside the Node UI.

You want things to ‘just work’ — and this is exactly how Quicknode approaches nodes… simple, powerful, effective. Once you plug in your Web3 URL into your code, you need just to focus on your app and its features. To the moon 🌝

Get Started!

Visit Quicknode.com and register — it takes only a couple of clicks to get started!

Need help with your project or have questions? Contact us via this form, on Twitter @Quicknode, or ping us on Discord!