Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,
   I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but since I am a relative beginning (around 2 weeks with coins), here it goes!

I've installed wallets for a few different coins, and sometimes they have trouble syncing at the beginning. I get a message that says "No block source available". So, I google it and invariably I come across a post in this forum telling me to create a config file, [coin name].conf, and add a bunch "addnode==xx.xx.xx" etc.

Ok, I get all that. I've done it a few times now, and now I know what to do. When a new wallet says "no block source available", I know that I'll be searching the internet for this magical list of nodes to put in my newly-written .conf file.

My question is....where do these nodes come from? I.e., how does the person who posted the list get know what nodes to use? Every time I find the answer, its a post from someone saying "Add these nodes!", followed by a list.  But, it would be so much simpler, going forward, if I could just look these up myself somewhere, instead of searching through all the posts.

I realize this may be a dumb question, but it can't hurt to ask! Thanks.

The commonly suggested nodes for bitcoin are generally the large web services like blockchain.info, mining pools, and the nodes of the core devs. A few of these high-availability seed nodes are coded into bitcoin, so that syncing can start automatically.

However, altcoins may not have properly functioning seed nodes, and may use different methods of peer discovery, so you have to find one or two running nodes manually through which peer information can then be automatically acquired, in addition to the blockchain. Theoretically, you should only need to do this once (with command-line arguments on startup of the wallet), as new peer information is stored in peers.dat and will be used automatically.

If you want to find a few addresses to connect to manually, look for the nodes of block explorers and web services. If you want a list instead of individual addresses, forum posts may be the only source of information available, as there's no centralized authority in the peer-to-peer network; bitcointalk, the wiki, and the source code on github are about as close as it gets.