No-telemetry Linux hosts for wallet infra: performance and privacy tradeoffs

Why ops teams building wallet infra care about no-telemetry Linux hosts

Hook: If you run wallet backends, indexers, or node infrastructure for NFTs and Web3 services you already know every millisecond of latency, every I/O stall, and every unexpected outbound connection matters. In 2026, with stronger data-sovereignty rules and heightened adversary scanning, choosing a no-telemetry, lightweight Linux host is an operational decision that affects performance, privacy, and attacker surface area.

Executive summary — findings you can act on now

• Winner by raw resource efficiency: Alpine Linux — smallest memory footprint and fastest cold-boot into a minimal container runtime.
• Winner by reproducibility and policy control: NixOS — deterministic builds make patching and rollbacks safe for indexers and long-running DB nodes.
• Best for systemd-free environments: Void Linux — low overhead, runit init, minimal background network chatter.
• Best immutable host for container-first stacks: Fedora CoreOS — slightly larger baseline but ideal for cluster-managed wallet services where immutability and rpm-ostree patching are priorities.
• Telemetry exposure: Fresh installs of Alpine, Void, and NixOS produced near-zero outbound connections. Fedora CoreOS made a small number of DNS Lookups to mirrors/registries until configured. Default desktop-focused distros (e.g., mainstream Ubuntu desktop spins) showed the most background telemetry unless explicitly hardened.

Context: why 2026 changes matter for wallet infra

Late 2025 and early 2026 accelerated two trends that change host selection calculus for wallet infrastructure:

• Regulators and cloud providers now enforce stricter data residency and logging transparency. That makes avoiding hidden telemetry an operational requirement for many enterprise wallet products.
• Immutable and container-native OS patterns (fedora-coreos, flatcar, NixOS in declarative container modes) became the standard for scale-out indexers and node fleets, making reproducibility and minimal attack surface more valuable than raw feature richness.

Test plan: how we benchmarked distros for wallet infra

To produce actionable numbers we created a repeatable lab test focused on real-world wallet backend workloads. Key components:

1. Testbed hardware: 8-core Intel Xeon (E-class cloud VM equivalent), 32 GB RAM, 1 TB NVMe.
2. Stack deployed on each host: PostgreSQL (13), a Rust-based indexer (memory-bound), and a Node.js wallet backend (I/O + CPU spikes during sync). This mirrors common NFT indexer + wallet service topologies.
3. Measurements captured: cold-boot time to service readiness, memory footprint after boot, 10-minute steady-state CPU & I/O under synthetic ingestion (500 TPS of small ops), and outbound network telemetry for the first 10 minutes after boot and during ingestion.
4. Tools: sysbench (CPU & OLTP), fio (disk), iperf3 (network), systemd-analyze or bootchart (when available), tcpdump and tshark for network captures, and custom scripts to measure time-to-HTTP-ready for backends.
5. Telemetry measurement policy: we treated any outbound connection to non-private IPs not in our allowlist (apt/yum/repos, container registries we configured) as potential telemetry. See the observability playbook for telemetry measurement and pipeline ideas.

Distros tested and why they matter

Alpine Linux (edge/static)

Alpine is musl-based and designed for minimalism. It's widely used for container bases and very attractive for single-purpose VMs hosting an indexer or wallet microservice.

NixOS (stable channel)

NixOS's declarative configuration and reproducible builds reduce drift. For indexer fleets where deterministic deployment and rollback are critical, NixOS is compelling.

Void Linux (runit)

Void is systemd-free, small, and operable with runit. Many ops teams prefer systemd-free stacks to reduce opaque background services and to control runtime behavior tightly.

Fedora CoreOS

Immutable host targeted at containers and orchestration. Good fit if you run wallet backends in containers managed by Kubernetes or podman machines and want automated atomic updates. If you run at the edge, also consider compact edge appliances and field devices with similar constraints — see our compact edge appliance field reviews.

Note about desktop-oriented privacy distros

There are desktop privacy distros (e.g., Tromjaro-like projects gaining attention in 2026). These are appealing for developers but rarely optimal for server-grade wallet infra. We focus on server-appropriate hosts.

Benchmark results (high level)

Below are the aggregated, repeatable results from our lab runs. All numbers are medians across three runs.

Cold boot to service-ready time (host -> postgres + indexer + wallet HTTP 200)

• Alpine: 22–28 seconds
• Void: 28–35 seconds
• NixOS: 40–55 seconds (due to service graph and Nix activation)
• Fedora CoreOS: 45–65 seconds (immutable boot + container startup)

Idle memory footprint after boot (OS + runtime, no containerized apps)

• Alpine: ~85 MB resident
• Void: ~120 MB resident
• NixOS: ~160 MB resident
• Fedora CoreOS: ~220 MB resident

Steady-state under synthetic ingestion (500 small transactions/sec)

• CPU utilization (avg across 8 cores): Alpine 48%; Void 50%; NixOS 53%; Fedora CoreOS 55%
• Average I/O latency (read p95): Alpine 6.2 ms; Void 6.4 ms; NixOS 6.8 ms; Fedora CoreOS 7.1 ms

Observed outbound telemetry in a 10-minute window (distinct external hosts contacted)

• Alpine: 0 external hosts by default (unless apk repos accessed).
• Void: 0 external hosts by default.
• NixOS: 0 external hosts from system services; opportunistic calls may occur if flakes or channels are used in activation.
• Fedora CoreOS: 2–3 hosts (mirror lookups, cloud-init metadata on some cloud images). After configuring registries/mirrors and disabling cloud-init, telemetry drops to 0.

Interpretation — what these numbers mean for wallet ops

Short version: all four hosts can run wallet backends and indexers at production scale—differences are about operational trade-offs:

• Alpine is best when minimal memory and fastest boot times matter (cold-scaling ephemeral indexer workers). But musl and busybox differences can create runtime incompatibilities with some native modules; test your binary stack.
• Void puts you in total control of init and service runtime without systemd complexity. Good for security teams who want to minimize attack surface and don't need systemd features.
• NixOS excels at reproducible deployments, which reduces risk for long-running DB/indexer nodes. The activation model is different and requires learning Nix but yields safer rollbacks.
• Fedora CoreOS is optimized for container-first scale. If you orchestrate with Kubernetes or use rpm-ostree CI pipelines, CoreOS simplifies image lifecycle—but you must harden cloud-init and registry configs to remove telemetry connectors.

Actionable checklist: secure and fast no-telemetry host for wallet infra

1. Start minimal: use a minimal server image (Alpine or Void) as the base for single-VM indexers. Remove non-essential packages immediately.
2. Lock network egress: apply egress firewall rules at host and VPC level. Example nftables rule to block unexpected egress:

   nft add table inet filter
   nft add chain inet filter output { type filter hook output priority 0 ; }
   nft add rule inet filter output oifname "lo" accept
   nft add rule inet filter output ip daddr 10.0.0.0/8 accept
   nft add rule inet filter output ct state established,related accept
   nft add rule inet filter output ip daddr 0.0.0.0/0 drop

3. Instrument telemetry detection: run tcpdump for the first 10 minutes of boot and ingress tests: tcpdump -n -i eth0 -w boot.pcap 'not net 10.0.0.0/8 and not host <registry-hosts>'. Use tshark to extract unique destination IPs — pair this with your observability tooling for continuous checks (observability).
4. Choose init model knowingly: if you rely on cgroups v2 or systemd timers, pick Fedora CoreOS/NixOS; if you prefer simplicity and minimal background services, pick Void or Alpine.
5. Use immutable images for fleets: if running indexers in fleets, consider an immutable host (CoreOS or NixOS in container-oriented mode) so updates are atomic and rollbacks trivial — see patterns for resilient architectures.
6. Test binary compatibility: if you choose Alpine (musl), compile or statically link native modules and test in CI—many Node native modules expect glibc behaviour. Developer productivity playbooks help here (developer productivity & cost signals).
7. Enforce runtime capabilities: apply seccomp and SELinux/AppArmor profiles to wallet processes and indexers to limit what a compromised process can do.

Hardening & telemetry controls for each distro

Alpine

• Disable automatic apk update scripts in /etc/init.d.
• Pin repositories to internal mirrors and set allowlist-only DNS in resolv.conf or use an internal DNS proxy.

Void

• Void ships with limited services. Remove any runit services you don't need and use runit-supervise to keep visibility.
• Use fwupd only if needed; otherwise uninstall to avoid extra telemetry paths.

NixOS

• Declare all network endpoints in your NixOS config and enable networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts set; this ensures immutability of network policies.
• Avoid flakes or remote channels in production unless you mirror them internally to prevent spontaneous network pulls.

Fedora CoreOS

• Set Ignition config to disable cloud-init metadata lookups and configure registries to use private mirrors.
• Use rpm-ostree overrides only through CI so host-level telemetry paths remain under change control.

Operational recipes — commands and snippets

Measure boot-to-ready for systemd hosts:

systemd-analyze blame
# time to HTTP ready (example):
START=$(date +%s)
while true; do curl -fsS http://127.0.0.1:8080/health && break || sleep 0.5; done
echo $(($(date +%s)-START))

Capture outbound contacts during boot (10 minutes):

timeout 600 tcpdump -n -i eth0 -w /tmp/boot-telemetry.pcap 'not net 10.0.0.0/8' &
# after capture:
tshark -r /tmp/boot-telemetry.pcap -T fields -e ip.dst | sort -u

Generate a minimal AppArmor profile for your wallet process (Ubuntu/DEB hosts):

sudo aa-genprof /usr/bin/node
# follow interactive prompts, then enforce

When NOT to pick minimal/no-telemetry distros

There are legitimate cases to avoid the smallest, no-telemetry images:

• If your stack depends on glibc-specific behaviour and rebuilding all dependencies is expensive, avoid Alpine unless you can statically link or containerize properly.
• If your operations team relies on systemd tooling, timers, and journalctl integrations for observability, Void may introduce operational friction.
• If you need out-of-the-box supported vendor security updates (RHEL/Ubuntu LTS ecosystems), the minimal distros require stronger internal patching processes — and additional compliance work if you operate in heavily regulated sectors (see risks in regulated environments).

Future predictions for 2026–2028

• More cloud providers will offer curated no-telemetry host images that are SOC/ISO certified and designed for crypto workloads — expect official Alpine-like and NixOS images in marketplace catalogs.
• Immutable and declarative OS models will become the default for indexer fleets. Nix style declarative management will be more mainstream in financial and regulated environments.
• Distros will ship clearer telemetry opt-in/opt-out defaults and machine-readable proofs of no-telemetry for compliance automation.

Practical recommendation matrix

Choose based on your operational priorities:

• Fast ephemeral scale (ephemeral indexer workers): Alpine.
• Deterministic long-lived nodes (DB/indexer masters): NixOS.
• Systemd-free security-first hosts: Void.
• Container-first cluster-managed infra: Fedora CoreOS (or equivalent immutable OS).

Closing takeaways

Host selection for wallet backends and indexers is not just a performance decision; it's a privacy and compliance decision. In our 2026 benchmarks Alpine gives the best raw efficiency for ephemeral workloads, NixOS wins for reproducibility and controlled rollouts, and Void gives the smallest operational surface when you want no systemd. Fedora CoreOS is the right pick when you optimize for immutable, container-first clusters—but requires explicit telemetry hardening.

Action: adopt a minimal base, lock egress, and include an automated telemetry-detection step in CI/CD to ensure your wallet fleet stays no-telemetry.

Next steps for your team

1. Run a 48-hour smoke test: deploy your exact indexer + wallet binaries on Alpine, NixOS, and Void, measure cold-start and steady-state, then review telemetry pcap outputs.
2. Automate host hardening in your infra-as-code repo. Treat telemetry checks like a security gate in CI — combine practices from our CI/CD playbook and developer productivity signals.
3. If you want a reproducible blueprint, contact us for a reference NixOS manifest and Alpine init scripts adapted to typical NFT indexer stacks — or consult compact edge appliance reviews to compare field deployables (edge appliance field review).

Call to action

Ready to reduce attack surface and lower latency for your wallet infra? Start with a targeted 48-hour host comparison in your environment. If you'd like, we can provide an automated test harness (Alpine, NixOS, Void, CoreOS) that runs the exact benchmarks described here against your binaries and returns a tailored host-selection report for your fleet.

Contact: deploy@nftlabs.cloud to request the harness or download the sample no-telemetry host configs for NixOS and Alpine from our repo. Build faster, safer, and more private wallet infrastructure.

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