Bitcoin Forum

If nobody ran full nodes there would be no Bitcoin, so they're important. Of course, not everyone in Bitcoin needs to run a full node for Bitcoin to work, but a healthy network has a good number of full nodes. Core developers have for some time been concerned that full node count has been low and declining. This survey seeks to provide clues why. Please take a moment to vote and comment as appropriate. Thanks!  

Edit: to clarify a full node is software that downloads the full blockchain in order to verify and forward valid blocks and transactions. Bitcoin Core is an example of such software.

I used to run a full node, but I was running it on my laptop that I use for everyday things so it became to inconvenient to keep it running. It made things sluggish. I'll boot it up ever week or so in order to sync the blockchain to my computer because I like being able to use bitcoin core for things, but I don't run a node anymore. So I selected "it's inconvenient".

I was going to select it's inconvenient... But one can run a node on a VPS or stored away in a drawer nowadays, so that's not a problem. Then I was going to select that syncing takes time... Ended up not doing that too, the blockchain is big and it simply takes time because... My hardware isn't that much of a deal :D Ended up selecting other reasons... The "other reasons" are the simple fact I did not bother to search for a good VPS service to host a node of mine yet, and I don't really want to pay monthly for a VPS just to host a node.

That being said, I have a raspberry, and I'm thinking of retiring a disk I have on a laptop to trade it for an SSD... If I do that, I'll just probably hook up the disk to an external enclosure, connect it to my raspberry and run a node from there :)

Okay, so far people are selecting "too inconvenient". Thanks! That's helpful. Anyone else please feel free to weigh in.

Syncing and bandwidth. I might well look into remote hosting one at some point but it's not practical at home.

I do run a full node

I don't know how to configure it to help the network   
I would like to highlight.

I run a full node only because I currently mine alt coins and have computers that are on 24/7 anyway. I also run other nodes as my wallets, but only on occasion when I need to use them. Basically let them sync for 10-20 minutes, make my transaction then shut them down again, so they really do not count.

I do think this is one of the disadvantages of bitcoin in that there is no PoS mechanism to encourage more people to run full nodes full-time except for pools, exchanges, etc, which is leading further to centralization.

I run a full node and P2Pool.

No incentive.
Electricity cost.

I don't think we need a PoS hybrid solution to encourage an army of nodes.  Mining pools only need one full node each, if the pools were somehow incentivized to be smaller there would be an abundance of smaller mining pool nodes.

I do run my PC 24/7 most of the time with or without running a node so electricity isn't really a problem for me to be honest but lately I have experienced a lot of issues with Bitcoin Core one of them is Database corrupted each time I reboot PC (even if I close it before restart) and it takes too much time ... I mean imagine each time I run it it gives database corrupted and it should Reindex once again the whole file and it takes up to two days for that , I should do this over and over again and when I asked around the forums people said it could be a Hardware or RAM problem so I gave up on it and Switched to Lightweight wallet .

to run a real full node the node should use more than 8 connections.

a good plug and play full node:

https://bitseed.org/

I run a full node, one that is hosted on a VPS (107.191.101.111), and has a decent amount of connections (67 currently). Whenever I send or receive a transaction, I will almost always rebroadcast the transaction with sendrawtransaction, although doing so will help the transaction propagate marginally better at best.

It is somewhat expensive to run a full node, especially considering how little the average end user would get out of running their own full node, and I would argue this is the primary reason why "average" Bitcoin users do not run their own full node.

Over the long term, I anticipate that most full nodes will be run by large businesses that accept and trade in bitcoin, for example exchanges, mining pools (obviously), companies like BitPay, bitcoin ATM operators, ect. as they have incentives to protect themselves against double spending attacks that would be easier with less full nodes running, and they have incentives to want to get a lot of transactions quickly propagated throughout the network.

It will take me 2 months to synchorize with the network! My connection is too slow. :)

I've run a few nodes on and off during the past couple years. I'm not currently running one right now, mostly because it would cost ~ $5 to $7 per month, and I'm not sure if it would benefit the network that much. Ideally I'd like to run one off of my Raspberry Pi or Odroid C1, but the problem with both of those is finding somewhere to store the blockchain. Plus I've heard that the Pi can't support much more than 8 connections, and it's more of a burden on the network than an aid. My network is fairly slow as well (~2.5 Mbps upload speed) and if I'm not careful to meter whatever I run the node on, it just brings my whole network to a complete crawl. However if I upgrade my internet connection sometime to something with a more reasonable upload speed then I'd definitely take a look at trying to set one up on the Odroid.

Router says I've got 173 connections.

I'm missing option "There is not reason to run it, except geeky feeling of green blinking box with linux on top of it"

really, I don't want to buy new ferrari because I'm running node, but some gift (t-shirt from foundation) or public appreciation (list of node owners volunteering) or some satoshis for at least cover electricity would be nice. sadly, there is nothing except "good geeky feeling", which can't remain forever and cover transaction network..

I've mentioned over on reddit that the initial cost of a hardware node really needs to come down for those who don't want it installed on their regular-use machine to be more inclined to set one up and run it - so there'd my reason not to run one.  That said, I do run one, on an older laptop that's already functioning as a torrent node (mostly open source software), media server, IRC bot and a host of other primarily headless things; adding Bitcoin Core to that just doesn't add that much more load.

As for people wanting incentives besides the whole 'strengthens the network' / 'gives you an independent fully verified blockchain + wallet', etc.: since it hasn't been mentioned yet: https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/incentive/

That is a nice incentive they offer, but the chance you'd be paid $10 for running your node is 1/195 every week, which is fairly low. If the developers wanted to really encourage people to run more stable nodes they could implement something similar to Darkcoin's masternode idea. Basically, to run a masternode the node operator needs a minimum amount of coin in their wallet, and then the node operator will be paid a certain amount of coin per day, depending on how many other masternodes are running at that time. I'm not sure how that all worked out for Darkcoin but it sounds like a decent idea to increase the number of nodes for the network.

 It's inconvenient
 It takes up too much hard drive space
 It uses too much bandwidth
 I prefer other wallet options
 takes too long to synchronize with the network
 I do run a full node

Everything from above.

I can't seam to get rid of an old habbit it seams, so i'm still running bitcoin core. TBH electrum is way better in terms of ..well..everything, but
for some reason i still run core also, unless someone is gaming, and then i have to turn it off due to ping.
I DO prefer electrum over it, but my main wallet is still in old client, and i doubt i'll change that, i want to help the network in the small way that i can.

cheers

Basically these reasons.. Expect that I don't run a full node because of it.. I also completely hate the Qt look (am I the only one who thinks it looks shitty?)

If I could host part of the blockchain and could upload less information I would consider running a (partial) node.

I hear ya. In a campaign ran by the EFF (I think) TOR relays were given a small token of appreciation - stickers, shirts and whatnot. If the BF were any good they might do the same. PS. I do run a full node. Geek.

I'm all about that full node.  Makes me feel like a better person.

Well and I have an excuse to use my 16 TB RAID (0+1), yes on 16 drives.  God knows why I built that thing, but it sure comes in handy and cheap when buying off of Craigslist.

yes yes:)

this is actually, what I want to point, because I'm running tor relay (which is consuming almost no CPU/memory/disk space and I can fully manage the bandwidth) and get fancy t-shirt and stickers for it. at least something. bitcoin node, which is big ass server like application with dozens of GB demand, consuming lot of disk I/O and you can't manage bandwidth (as far as I know) can bring you few bucks in some lottery and nothing else..

are developers working on it or is there some plans how to motivate guys to run the node..?

Im launching www.bitcoinnodeday.org to raise awareness about full nodes.