Nodes, Throughput, and Network Performance
Summary
This chapter covers the operational components of blockchain networks — the nodes that maintain and validate the ledger, and the performance characteristics that constrain real-world deployments. Students will understand the differences between full and light nodes, how the mempool manages pending transactions, and how network latency and throughput create fundamental limits on blockchain scalability. Infrastructure cost is introduced as a key factor in architecture evaluation.
Concepts Covered
This chapter covers the following 9 concepts from the learning graph:
- Node
- Full Node
- Light Node
- Mempool
- Transaction Throughput
- Network Latency
- Throughput vs Latency
- Infrastructure Cost
- Capital Expense
Prerequisites
This chapter builds on concepts from:
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