Nodes & roles

Choose a Morpheum node role—Validator, Full, Sentry, Archive, or AgentPortal—and follow deployment guides for each

What is a node?

A node is the software you run to join the Morpheum network: it synchronizes state, participates in peer-to-peer networking, and—depending on role—may take part in consensus or serve public APIs. You pick a role when you first set up the machine; the role determines what the node is allowed to do, how it should be exposed on the network, and how much history it keeps.

This section is for operators and integrators who need to deploy and run nodes, not for low-level implementation details.

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Choosing a role

Role	Best for	Consensus	Typical network posture
Validator	Securing the chain and executing the canonical state transition	Yes	Private peers only; do not expose public RPC here
Full	Indexers, apps, and teams that need current chain state without voting	No	Private or team-scoped access
Sentry	Public RPC and WebSocket traffic in front of validators	No	Internet-facing; rate limits and DDoS protection
Archive	Analytics, explorers, and workflows that need deep history	No	Often API-oriented; large storage
AgentPortal	Low-latency AI and agent workloads against the network	No	Tuned for agent traffic and portal features

Validators execute transactions and participate in consensus. All other roles follow the chain by applying committed updates produced elsewhere—they do not replace a validator for safety-critical execution.

Public APIs (RPC, WebSocket, JSON-RPC, agent portals) belong on Sentry, Full, Archive, or AgentPortal nodes as your policy allows—not on validators.

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Where to go next

DIY stack setup

Self-build, colocation, OS baseline, and networking before you deploy by role.

Cloud

VPCs, instance classes, storage, and security patterns for cloud deployments.

Command-line interface

Initialize a data directory, run the node, snapshots, genesis helpers, and agent-related commands.

Deploy a validator

Keys, private peering, and running a consensus node safely.

Deploy a full node

Default-style node for operators and indexers.

Deploy a sentry

Public gateway in front of validators.

Deploy an archive node

Long retention and historical queries.

Deploy an agent portal

AI- and agent-optimized deployment.