Hedera Moves to Real-Time Data Pipeline as Block Nodes Replace Record Files

Hedera is preparing to overhaul the infrastructure that delivers on-chain data to wallets, exchanges and applications, with a transition to Block Nodes expected to go live in September. The change targets a long-standing weakness in how information reaches end users: the prices, balances and marketplace activity displayed across the ecosystem do not come directly from the network, but from an intermediate layer that has been prone to delays and outages.

That layer is the Mirror Node, a service that reads activity on Hedera, processes it, and exposes it through APIs used by wallets, dashboards, bots and trading interfaces. Under the current model, consensus nodes write Record Files to cloud object storage, and Mirror Nodes download and validate those files before serving the data. The design has supported the network for years, but it carries structural limitations that surface as missing token prices, blank balances and lagging charts.

Three problems define the existing setup. The first is a dependency on centralized storage: because data is staged in Record Files held in the cloud, an outage at that storage layer can leave applications without information to display. The second is processing overhead, as Mirror Nodes cannot request only the data they need and instead must download entire files containing large volumes of irrelevant content. The third, a consequence of the first two, is latency. Data can take minutes to propagate, leaving price charts behind the market and delivering sale notifications late.

Block Nodes are designed to address those issues. Rather than relying on file uploads to the cloud, the network pushes activity in real time to Block Nodes through the Block Stream, a unified format that bundles everything occurring in each block. Mirror Nodes then subscribe to a Block Node and receive only the data relevant to them, eliminating the need to ingest unnecessary information.

According to Hedera's documentation, Block Nodes replace the previous record-stream file upload mechanism with a real-time, push-based feed of all network activity, making it available to downstream consumers such as Mirror Nodes, indexers and analytics services. The Block Stream format, standardized under HIP-1056, reduces the size of the data Mirror Nodes must process and lowers ingestion costs.

The expected gains are faster, real-time data delivery, the removal of redundant processing, reduced reliance on centralized storage, and greater scalability across the network. Record Files and cloud storage are not being eliminated; instead, they step back from their role as the primary data path and remain as a backup for emergency scenarios.

The migration is scheduled for September. If deployed as planned, it would mark one of the more significant changes to Hedera's data infrastructure to date, with direct implications for the responsiveness and reliability of the wallets, exchanges and applications that depend on it.