Nodes
The TON Blockchain is maintained by a distributed network of nodes.
Some are validators, who produce and validate blocks. Others are full nodes, who keep history and serve data.
Together, these components form the backbone of TON’s decentralized architecture.
What do nodes actually keep
Nodes maintain:
- Blocks — ordered chains of transactions.
- Shard states — the current state of accounts (balances, code, and data).
- Proofs — cryptographic guarantees that connect states and blocks.
This ensures that even a lite client can verify the correctness of an account’s state without trusting any single node — relying only on cryptographic proofs.
Full nodes
A full node is the basic node type in TON. It stores the blockchain history and provides access to it:
- Stores recent blocks and account states for a week or entire history (optional, depending on configuration).
- Provides APIs and data for explorers, developers, wallets, and analytics (optional).
Depending on the chosen settings for the full node:
- A full node that keeps the entire block history is called an archive node.
- A full node with enabled data querying is called a liteserver.
Validator node
Validators are the backbone of consensus. They also function as full nodes but with additional responsibilities:
- Collect incoming transactions and form new blocks.
- Validate and sign blocks produced by other validators.
- Maintain the current shard state (balances, code, and data of accounts).
- Store recent blocks to extend the chain.
Validators do not need to keep the full blockchain history. They focus on the present — ensuring new blocks are valid and properly added to the chain.
Lite clients
A liteserver allows external applications to interact with the blockchain. Applications that retrieve data from nodes are called lite clients in TON.
Lite clients enable users to access blockchain data, send external messages, and retrieve information about blocks and transactions — for example, to fetch and update wallet balances.
Lite clients perform the following tasks:
- Download block headers.
- Verify Merkle proofs for the specific account data they need.
- Use validators’ signatures to confirm authenticity.
Lite clients make it possible to use TON securely on resource-constrained devices (like mobile phones) without trusting any single server.
Read more about nodes in Nodes documentation.