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Reading the Polkadot docs, I've run into the following statement:

Validators should only run the Polkadot binary, and they should not listen on any port other than the configured p2p port.

So far, what I understand is that when someone submits a transaction, every network participant will have to validate the transaction, so It will eventually reach a validator node. So I was wondering, where does the Polkadot Chrome extension connect to if only the libp2p port is available? Are there sync nodes that only gossip transactions?

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The statement you quoted represents a security measure. This is a recommended best-practice because validators are sensitive nodes and attack surfaces must be reduced as much as possible.

Theoretically speaking, there's nothing preventing a validator node having regular RPC methods exposed such that it can be used to submit transactions. However that would be considered a bad security practice.

PolkadotJS (which I assume is what you mean by Chrome extension) sends RPC calls to regular (non-validator) full nodes. By having its p2p port open, the validator will receive transactions via gossip.

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  • Makes sense, does PolkadotJS connect to boot-nodes in order to discover nodes available for RPC calls (I assume they peer with any node and do some stuff to later on submit the extrinsic) or does it connect to a different service to find these non-validator nodes? Thanks for your response!
    – andresvsm
    Jul 19, 2022 at 6:25
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    the endpoints are defined here: github.com/polkadot-js/apps/blob/… Jul 19, 2022 at 13:52

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