Overview

An archival fullnode maintains complete blockchain history from genesis by disabling ledger pruning. Unlike standard public fullnodes (PFNs) that sync from a recent state and prune old data, archival nodes preserve the full transaction history.

When to Use an Archival Node

An archival node is required if you need to:

• Query historical blockchain state from any point in time
• Access complete transaction history from genesis
• Run indexers that require full historical data
• Provide historical data services to other applications

Key Configuration Difference

The only configuration difference between a standard PFN and an archival node is the storage_pruner_config setting:

storage:
  storage_pruner_config:
    ledger_pruner_config:
      enable: false  # Disable pruning for archival nodes

This setting prevents the node from pruning old ledger data, ensuring complete history is maintained.

Bootstrapping with Existing Data

Because archival nodes maintain complete history, syncing from genesis would take an extremely long time. Movement Labs provides public backups that you can use to bootstrap your archival node with existing data.

The backups are:

• Updated hourly
• Maintained for 14 days of snapshots
• Available for both mainnet and testnet

See the deployment guides for instructions on restoring from backups.

Hardware Requirements

Next Steps

• Run an Archival Node - Overview of running archival nodes
• Deploy with Docker - Deploy using Docker containers
• Deploy from Source - Build and deploy from source code