Lesson: Hardware and Infrastructure Layer
Completion requirements
In the crypto assets tech stack, the Hardware and Infrastructure Layer forms the crucial foundation upon which everything else is built. Think of it as the bedrock of a building, providing the essential physical resources needed for the entire system to function.
1. Hardware:
- Nodes: The computers running the blockchain software and participating in the network. There are different types of nodes, including full nodes (store the entire blockchain history), light nodes (rely on full nodes for data), and validator nodes (responsible for consensus and block validation).
- Mining equipment: For Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains, specialized hardware like GPUs and ASICs is used for mining (solving cryptographic puzzles to validate transactions and earn rewards).