Bitcoin Forum

I understand that running a full node for Bitcoin is not like running a node for other altcoins that pay you a small amount, but I do have a question for the community.

Although I have never installed and downloaded all of the requirements needed to run a node, I have had the opportunity to walkthrough some wallets and also play around in mempool to see some unconfirmed transactions, and during that process I wondered if anyone running a full node can confirm any Bitcoin transaction in a block even if they do not receive the gas fee? Is it necessary for the transaction to be confirmed by a miner?

Irrespective of the wallet that you are using, be it SPV wallet or full client, a miner will have to include your transaction in a block for it to get confirmed.

There is nothing like gas fee while referring to bitcoin, unlike some altcoins. If it is bitcoin, it is called fee or transaction fee.

When people say that transactions is "confirmed", it means that it got included into block. Only miners who mine a block decide which transactions go there. But confirming shouldn't be confused with validating.

Validating means checking that transaction doesn't break any rules. Like trying to spend the coins without knowing the private key. Or spending coins that were already spent. Spending incorrect amount. And so on.
Validation is done by everyone. If you are using any wallet, it validates the transactions that involve your addresses. But full nodes also help to spread new transactions and new block to each other. Together these full nodes + mining nodes are the Bitcoin network. The full nodes that don't mine are not getting any rewards.

Only full nodes validate and propagate mined blocks and transactions. SPV wallets can not do that.

With altcoins, you run nodes in their Proof of Stake network and get staking rewards.

Transactions confirm by miners because miners do the math and solve blocks. You can run a full nodes without ASICs which are used by miners to mine Bitcoin blocks and confirm transactions.

[Guide] How to run a Bitcoin Core full node for under 50 bucks! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5364742.0)

Full nodes are parts of Bitcoin network (https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch08.asciidoc).

Full nodes check various aspects of a transaction, including its structure, signatures but it doesn't have to ability or control to pick the transaction to be included in a block. So running the full node will help you with the validation process quickly and broadcast the transaction to mempool which means they will be in the unconfirmed status.

Whereas miners are the one which involves in the selection of all the transactions from the mempool and include them in block they mine. They are incentivized to include a transaction with higher gas fee to earn those as reward for mining a block.

You do not need to run a full node to be able to broadcast a transaction to the mempool, any wallet can do that and other nodes can validate the transaction after which they add it to their mempool.

It is not called gas fees in Bitcoin, but it is called transaction fees.

- Jay -

Ofcourse we don't need full blockchain data to broadcast a Bitcoin transaction, any light weight wallets can do it, all I am saying is even having a full node will not play any part in the confirmation since it's completely under control of miners.

Apologize for the wrong terminology used, in Bitcoin the transaction fee.

To Run a full node you need to download the whole blockchain which is at current 494 GB on your system as you don't have to depend on others for getting data if you need any and can retrieve it directly and validate the transaction.So you need to have this much memory at current with more as size is increasing day by day so need extra disk space if you are running full node client.

Only miners can mine Bitcoin blocks, but mind you that miners do not mine a single transaction, the transactions will be compiled into a candidate block and then the miner will then try to add that block (containing many transactions) into the blockchain, the more transactions in a block will earn the miners more in transaction fees, but nonetheless they cannot exceed the block size limit.

It seems you are comparing both Bitcoin and Ethereum since you mention gas fees.
In ETH you can stake to become a validator and earn rewards while in Bitcoin full node even if you don't stake it can validate transactions but it can't confirm a transaction without a miner. Only miners who can solve blocks and get rewarded but only pool operators can choose what transactions they are going to include on the block they mine.
Once a block solve where your transaction is included a full node will validate it if they follow the consensus rules and then include it in the blockchain.

They already explained about full node and what does it do and about the transaction getting confirmed. As you can see, only miners confirms transactions that will be added to a block but if you want your transaction to get confirmed right away is to use CPFP method or use RBF if you are using a wallet that supports RBF. If you want to confirm a transaction then you should start mining if you have a mining gear but If not then you can only wait for the transactions to be confirmed by a miner.

I get it now, it was just a curiosity question though.


I have heard about gas fee from others so I just got stuck to the idea that all tokens/coin make use of gas fee including Bitcoin.