If you’re building blockchain applications beyond basic cryptocurrency, you need more than standard hosting. Whether you’re running validator nodes, operating RPC endpoints, or supporting data-heavy archival systems, your infrastructure requirements go far beyond what traditional cloud providers can deliver. Most teams start with basic cloud hosting, only to discover that validator operations, consensus mechanisms, and data availability layers demand predictable performance and dedicated resources that work together as an integrated blockchain infrastructure stack.
The Infrastructure Challenge for Modern Blockchain Applications
Building blockchain infrastructure isn’t just about spinning up virtual machines. Modern blockchain applications require coordinated systems that handle everything from validator consensus to data availability layers. Unlike monolithic chains like Ethereum where execution, consensus, and data availability all happen on one layer, modular chains separate those responsibilities, creating unique infrastructure demands.
Enterprise blockchain infrastructure needs nodes, software implementations, and cloud or hardware-based systems to function. But the real challenge comes when you need these components to work together reliably. Because modular blockchain layers operate independently and communicate across chains or rollups, network latency and consistency between nodes becomes a major infrastructure challenge.
Consider what happens when you’re running a Solana validator node that needs to participate in consensus while simultaneously serving RPC requests to your applications. Your validator performance directly impacts rewards, while RPC response times affect user experience.
Traditional cloud environments struggle with these requirements because they’re built for general-purpose workloads, not the specific demands of blockchain infrastructure. As highlighted in OpenMetal’s analysis of modular blockchain infrastructure, cloud VMs share hardware with other tenants, meaning performance can vary minute to minute, which is a problem for consensus algorithms and data availability services.
Building Complete Infrastructure Stacks with OpenMetal
OpenMetal provides dedicated compute, storage, and networking resources that can be combined into full blockchain infrastructure stacks. Rather than forcing you to adapt your blockchain applications to hosting limitations, you get the control to design infrastructure that matches your specific requirements.
Compute Layer: Balanced to High-Performance Servers
Medium V4 servers offer balanced CPU and memory for validator nodes and RPC endpoints. These systems provide consistent performance without the variability of shared cloud environments, making them suitable for networks where timing and response consistency matter.
Large and XL V4 servers provide higher memory and throughput, supporting archival nodes and data-heavy chains. When you’re running full archival nodes for networks like Ethereum or storing complete transaction history for analytics, memory bandwidth becomes crucial. Storage is also indispensable as blockchain is data-heavy, and low latency storage will improve your network speeds.
XXL V4 servers extend capacity further for workloads such as high-throughput validator clusters or analytics tied to blockchain data. These systems handle the most demanding blockchain workloads, from running multiple validator instances to processing large-scale blockchain analytics.
As OpenMetal’s research on modular blockchain infrastructure shows, bare metal hosting removes the abstraction—you get the physical server with no hypervisor and no noisy neighbors. This translates to predictable performance for consensus participation and consistent response times for user-facing services.
Storage Layer: Purpose-Built for Blockchain Data
For the storage layer, OpenMetal offers storage-optimized servers that combine NVMe cache with large enterprise HDDs. These systems are designed for blockchain state data and archival history that must scale to hundreds of terabytes while maintaining throughput.
Blockchain storage requirements grow exponentially, with networks like Ethereum requiring multiple terabytes for full node operation. Modern blockchain applications need systems that can handle both high-speed access to current state data and long-term storage of historical information.
Ceph-based distributed storage is integrated into private cloud deployments, allowing data to be replicated and accessed across nodes without bottlenecks. This addresses one of the most common pain points in blockchain infrastructure: ensuring that your storage can handle both the high IOPS requirements of active blockchain state and the capacity requirements of long-term data retention.
Networking Layer: Dedicated Connectivity and Isolation
Networking is provisioned with dual 10 Gbps private links per server and isolated VLANs for inter-node communication. This level of network control is essential when you’re coordinating between validator nodes, RPC endpoints, and monitoring systems. As noted in OpenMetal’s modular blockchain analysis, validator nodes and sequencers need to talk to each other quickly—if your cloud VMs are scattered across availability zones or continents, your network performance suffers.
Public connectivity includes dual 10 Gbps uplinks, DDoS protection, and support for customer-owned IP ranges. When you’re operating public-facing RPC endpoints or validator nodes that need to communicate with the broader network, having dedicated bandwidth and DDoS protection becomes essential for maintaining uptime.
Within OpenStack, teams can create virtual private clouds (VPCs) with VXLAN overlays, firewall rules, NAT, and VPN-as-a-Service. This allows separation of validator, RPC, monitoring, and indexing components within the same private infrastructure while maintaining the security isolation that blockchain applications require.
Real-World Infrastructure Architecture
The power of building complete infrastructure stacks becomes clear when you look at how teams actually deploy blockchain applications. Modular blockchains can struggle with general-purpose cloud infrastructure because they need coordinated performance across multiple components.
Consider a team running a Cosmos validator alongside RPC services and blockchain indexing. They need their validator to maintain consistent participation in consensus, their RPC endpoints to serve user queries with predictable latency, and their indexing systems to process transaction data without impacting validator performance.
With OpenMetal’s infrastructure stack approach, they can deploy their validator on a dedicated Large V4 server, run RPC endpoints on Medium V4 servers, and use Ceph storage clusters for blockchain indexing data. All components communicate over dedicated 10 Gbps networking, ensuring that RPC load doesn’t impact validator consensus participation.
Modular blockchain applications will differ significantly from traditional cryptocurrencies and require intense compute activity for the hashing and cryptography necessary for establishing trust across blockchain networks.
Cost Predictability and Infrastructure Control
All infrastructure operates on fixed monthly pricing tied to hardware capacity, with egress handled through 95th percentile billing. This prevents unpredictable transfer costs common in public cloud providers. Building a blockchain infrastructure for any business will require a lot of time, money, and effort, but predictable costs make planning and scaling much more manageable.
The pricing model aligns with how blockchain infrastructure actually operates. Unlike traditional applications with variable usage patterns, blockchain nodes and validators run continuously. Having fixed costs for your dedicated resources, combined with predictable networking costs, eliminates the budget uncertainty that comes with variable cloud pricing.
By combining compute servers, storage servers, and private networking, blockchain teams can design and control complete infrastructure stacks that match the performance, scaling, and security requirements of their networks. This level of control becomes even more important as blockchain applications mature beyond basic token transfers.
Beyond Simple Hosting: Building for Scale
The difference between hosting and infrastructure stacks becomes most apparent when you need to scale. Blockchain networks require distributed computing resources, with nodes sharing processing power to validate transactions. Having many nodes helps deal with the substantial hardware requirements that blockchain applications demand.
When your blockchain application grows from supporting hundreds of users to thousands, or when you need to add new validator nodes for different networks, having infrastructure designed as integrated stacks makes expansion straightforward. You can add compute capacity, expand storage, or enhance networking without redesigning your entire deployment.
At OpenMetal, we’ve seen teams building modular infrastructure benefit most from bare metal when running Tendermint-based validator nodes where low-latency consensus directly impacts rewards, hosting rollups or sequencers that require predictable compute and network behavior, storing high-volume data availability layers using Ceph storage, and supporting cryptographic workloads that benefit from direct hardware access.
The infrastructure stack approach also supports the operational complexity that comes with production blockchain deployments. Running validators and nodes requires addressing technical demands, operational complexities, and continuous monitoring as protocols evolve.
Getting Started with Blockchain Infrastructure Stacks
Building your blockchain infrastructure stack starts with understanding your specific requirements. Are you running validators that need consistent low-latency performance? Do you need to serve RPC requests with predictable response times? Are you storing blockchain data that needs to scale to hundreds of terabytes?
OpenMetal’s bare metal servers, hosted private clouds, and storage clusters provide the building blocks for infrastructure stacks that can handle these requirements. Whether you’re scaling blockchain startups or building validator infrastructure, having control over your complete infrastructure stack makes the difference between applications that work and applications that scale reliably.
The blockchain ecosystem continues evolving beyond simple hosting needs. Teams building the next generation of decentralized applications need infrastructure that matches their technical requirements, not infrastructure that forces them to adapt their applications to hosting limitations. With complete control over compute, storage, and networking, you can build blockchain infrastructure stacks that support your specific use case while providing room to grow as your applications and user base expand.
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