Bitcoin Forum

In these days in Kroin we are coding our transactions verification process and of course we peek a little bit outside our office, also for take a breath!

This article in coin desk http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-nodes-need/ put some cards on table:

What really happening to btc network ?
Why Nodes numbers dropping so fast recently ?
Why nobody talks about it ?

Is just how money developers makes for sustain btc network?

Any opinions are welcomed.

one of the Kroin Staff

That's an old article in CoinDesk, but the problem has only gotten worse. Probably the chief reasons for the drop are *How large the blockchain has become (and difficult to manage on home computers), and The proliferation of wallet software that does not download the full chain. The Bitcoin Foundation wrote about this problem a month or so ago, too.

A lot of us run full nodes on VPS. That can be pretty inexpensive -- at $2/mo. But more help is certainly needed. All of us who benefit from the network ought to give back to it in ways commensurate with our received benefit.

Too lagre blockchain now, like me, with the home computer to open the wallet was powerless, waiting for the improvement of wallet appear.

Sooo, one day we give $20 for each BTC we own and the next we take it back?  :)

Yes unfortunately that's the reality. The bloated blockchain remains a problem. It took me a week plus to finish sync on my slow network and i wonder with most lite wallet nowadays, it doesn't become a requirement anymore or give an incentive for people to maintain a node.

I think we expected that mainstream users will largely use online and non-node wallets. Most people want a system than is lighter and can run on cell phones. You don't have to rely on another entity to use BTC, but I bet in the future 90% will.

I expect the number of nodes to raise when the pruning stuff is available, although admittedly only a few of them will store the whole blockchain so most won't be "full" nodes. They will relay transactions and blocks though.

Most of them don't bother to run one because of their bandwidth and large disk space requirement. People would ultimately want to use the wallet instantly and Bitcoin core typically take around a few hours to sync and on some computers, even days. SPV wallet are more convenient. The network need more reliable node with high availability so it is pretty useless for a average home user to run a full node.

We should first think about how many nodes we need or want. Everybody says "more!". how many more and why?

It's a considerable problem. Decentralization is at stake.

I don't understand why Gavin is pushing for an automatic block size limit increase that will make this problem only worse (I think the block size limit should be raised by demand only, not in an automatic fashion). Imho it's a totally wrong perception of priorities to aim at including as many transaction as possible without costs while the foundation of the whole network is in danger.

Enabling semi-full-nodes via pruning is extremely important for network health.

ya.ya.yo!

Running a node since yesterday, hovering between 20-30 connections  8)

You have to differentiate between the quality of the nodes. Home PCs which are up a few hours a day on low bandwith or nodes on dedicated 24/7 servers. I don't know if there is a metric to get this information. The plain number of nodes doesn't mean much. Today many people run full nodes on a VPS.

 
With a bit of knowledge, one can launch over a thousand nodes around the world via VPS and the help of bash script, in few hours.

Yes it is a problem and solving it is damn easy.

What we can start is to run a full node at home and at work (if possible) and also run some VPS.
If most people do it, problem solved so just do it.

Just using my MacBook. No clue of how VPS things work lol.

the node list of https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/ is not that accurate. my IP is geo-tagged and locked so its very possible to locate me on the map........... yet im not on the map.

i know of 12 other people within 40 miles of me, all using bitcoin-core... yet.. not on the map. so i do not bother caring about the stats of bitnodes as it only shows which nodes are linked to their node.. not the entire worlds nodes.

coindesk and some posters here are not reading "reachable nodes" and thinking that bitnodes is the 100% definitive listing site

yes  it is so slow now.

Bless you! That's a good start. I have 3 going on VPS and they probably average about 70 connections. Sometimes, over 100 -- even with a limiter set at 100.  Go figure.

If you're interested in the VPS thing, see my post of earlier this year: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=582817.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=582817.0)

There are good people that will set you up one for free.

I don't see how there being fewer full nodes has any negative impact on decentralization.  The only benefit of running a full node is that other users may be able to use you as an additional peer when downloading the blockchain, and then only if you have your port forwarded properly.

Mining is the only significant way to support the network.  Having an idle node on your vps has almost no positive effect.

Just because the limit as to how large each block can be is raised does not mean that the actual size of blocks will increase. The actual size of blocks will increase up to the block limit based on the amount of on-chain transactions that bitcoin has.

I would say that the main reason that we are seeing less nodes is because people no longer need to run a full node in order to run a wallet. I think this will be reversed as more companies start to accept and use bitcoin. I would predict that companies like exchanges, merchants and payment processors (like coinbase/bitpay) will be the primary operators of nodes as they have a very good reason to want to have a full node (and really a well-connected full node)

When someone runs bitcoin-qt in his personal machine connected to the internet with default configuration, is not he running a full node ?

Not unless he also opens Port 8333 on his firewall.

 blockchain is too lagre.Safety is no problem, inconvenient to use, give up.

Actually you are... you have the same amount of data as a business does, its that only ~ 8 people can access it .

Now to get more people to run full nodes, do like darkcoin does.. their supernoods get a % of each block that is found.. The more connections you have to your node the more of the btc fees you get.

Icon

You can only have 8 outgoing connections which means you are connecting to others and not others connecting to you which is pretty much useless. By portforwarding 8333, you allow others to connect to you and therefore you are running a full node. That would pretty much render all ASIC miners and mining operation useless if you allow nodes to get transaction fees instead of miners.

Its the problem of blockchain size. Too big in file system. And also it takes a long time for any non-ssd pc to start bitcoin core application.
Everyone is using lightweight wallet now, posing a big threat to the vulnerability of the whole network.

Large mining pools have the power/influence that really matters in the BTC network. As long as no one pool gets near 50% how is there any real threat to the network from a lack of home pc (& vps) nodes?

The ant in the antfarm is not doing a whole lot by itself, however in combination the ants are doing a whole lot of work. And every ant contributes.

If every ant decided they were unimportant, all work would halt to a grind.

Every participant in the bitcoin system is important, even if he only provides a full bitcoin node. He adds strength to the distributed network.

Where some people opt for the simplest solutions and need monetary incentives, others see things at a larger scale and with their visionary attitude realize that every little effort contributes to the growth and success of bitcoin.

The more distributed the block chain is, the better.

Every business who wants bitcoin to succeed should run a full node. While just getting paid through bitpay and then immediately converting to fiat is better than nothing, this is not what bitcoin should be, the day when we have a full chain, where the farmer produces milk, which a techie buys with bitcoins he made from selling hosting and the datacenter accepts bitcoins for his servers, and the landlord and peering partners of the datacenter also accepts bitcoin, then we have the full chain. No fiat, only bitcoin.

Since it is possible today to buy many things and services with bitcoin, I think people who are really into bitcoin should prioritize trade with bitcoins. Just converting immediately to fiat should not be the goal.  On the same breath, those believers of bitcoin should also run a full node, imo.

While the individual cannot achieve anything significant on its own, the collective as a whole can change the world. Well, that's maybe stretching it for now, but Bitcoin's off to a good start!

What is the cost of running a full node? on VPS?

Linode
http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1414138024.png
https://www.linode.com/pricing

Digitalocean
http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1414137858.png
https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

That's the 2 most popular VPS provider. Few minutes to launch, very flexible.

I have mine with We Love Servers.  60GB SSD (for now rapidly expanding blockchain size) -- price: $2/month. And I can pay in bitcoin.

Nice. I didn't know this one.

Also you can use the CPU of the VPS and mine Monero to reduce the cost by about 50% to 100%.

No, that is impossible. You cannot mine on VPS as the processor are being shared and most of their TOS ban mining and will immediately suspend your VPS if you do so. VPS performance is actually pretty bad so you can't really get much.

CPU coins used to be exclusively mined on VPS.
It depend of the TOS but mining do not use the bandwidth or the HDD at all, only the CPU.
In most case it fit the TOS.
I never seen any VPS miner getting banned (unless it was on a trial account).
They may warn you by email you if you use 1000 VPS only to mine but it is really exceptional.

node activity should be kind of incentive along with PoW

That's the problem. You are clogging the node's resources if you really do mine. There are certain providers which allow you to mine on their VPS but I could guarantee their price is high and the performance isn't good as people mine on the VPS, consuming the resources. Take a look at the TOS of one VPS provider (http://dewlance.com/tos.html).
VPS mining is usually forbidden on most VPS unless you have a dedicated server which only you use the whole node.However, they are quite expensive compared to a VPS. I have tried doing it once and I was banned within 24 hours for continuously consuming the whole server resource, this is classified under server abuse and I was terminated immediately.

Just try Linode and DigitalOcean, as long as you pay, they don't bother you.
I used to have like 100 VPS on both. Never had any complain and some of the staff knew what I was doing because I asked them for help few times.

Most VPS miners use Amazon AWS though (c3.8xlarge).
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
It is the best to mine and they don't ban for mining but you pay for the bandwidth used if you have too many instances.

I could miss $2 a month to support the network. But to me it looks like centralization of bitcoin nodes. Do those nodes share the same ip address? Of so, what's the benefit of running them?
Wouldn't it be better for the network if the nodes are geographically spread around the world, all using different hardware and ip addresses? Or are vps' considered "better than nothing"?
In other words, what's better? A low end home server running a node or a shared centralized node on high end hardware?

Nope, they do not have the same IP. However, the IP are within the same /16 block. This means that Bitcoin clients will only connect to one of the nodes running on the /16 block unless you specify that you want to connect to it, in the bitcoin.conf, add this 'addnode=IP:PORT'. Different hardware doesn't affect the node, only the geographical location. The best choice is to select a place with very little bitcoin nodes and buy a server at that country and run a node.

Each VPS has a different unique IP.
With most providers, you can chose the location between many countries.
Yes, a VPS does its job as full Bitcoin node.
VPS are great node.

You are looking for a fast and stable Internet connection. The hardware doesn't matter much. You just need enough space on the HDD.

EDIT : As ranochigo said, you must be careful about the settings in bitcoin.conf
You need to ask help and advices from knowledgeable members.

You see, each day a new thread,and  each thread make me think if I should go invest and buy at least 1 BTC or not . It will rise eventually or what guys .. if yes how much :'( I only have 20$ worth of BTC at the moment

Here's the IP address on one of my VPS nodes: http://192.227.139.229/ It doesn't look shared to me. But I'm not the expert on these things. I'll let others who know more, write more. I'd say, there are things that probably make it not as good as Bitcoin Core of bitcoind running on a fast PC connection; but for $2/mo?! That's significantly less that your hardware maintenance, Internet, and electricity cost on a home or office PC.  And yes, WeLoveServers offers (I think, now) four different U.S. city locations for this special pricing.

$2?? their cheapest VPS at weloveservers is $4 and it has just a 15gb hdd, not enough for the blockchain to fit. It doesn't say SSD anywhere either. If they had ssds you can be pretty sure it would be written all over.

Dude it looks like you're being paid to advertise. wtf is this

Of course more nodes is more decentralized. More the better. Think about it, what is more likely to break? A network with just 2 nodes, or a network with 2000 nodes?

Is there any security risk associated if I open Port 8333 on my firewall ?

Both of those are insufficient to run a full node. The 30GB one will be forced to shutdown in a month or two, since the current blockchain is nearly 30GB already.

Not paid to advertise; but, yes, inaccurate on the ssd. That's not advertised on their site. It's just 60GB Disk Space Storage.

Here's what I posted about this on September 8: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=774791.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=774791.0)  I've not heard from anyone that this method of acquiring a $2/mo server is no longer doable.  I do know I have 60GB on my three nodes and my monthly bill is just $6.

Strictly spoken yes, any port open increases risks.
But if you keep your software updated the risk are minimal.
If the only port open is 8333, and it is pointed to bitcoind which is always the latest version, then the risk is close to zero.

Decentralization of the Bitcoin network mainly refers to the distribution of hashing power, not the number of nodes.  The Bitcoin network becomes no more or less secure with the increase or decrease in number of nodes.  

As long as two honest nodes exist, the network will function.  However, this would also most likely indicate that there are only two miners securing the network and that could be a concern.

You will not stay BTC rich with only 2 nodes.

Quoted from BTCfeed: (http://www.btcfeed.net/news/the-importance-of-bitcoin-nodes-and-how-to-make-one/)

I didn't say that having only two nodes would be a good thing.  Of course it's nice to have a lot of nodes.  While the number of nodes might have reduced, it's nowhere near a level to be concerned about.

The network does not "require many functioning nodes".  It requires two.

Even with only two honest nodes, it is possible to combat double spends 100%.

The only attack vector that could be of minor concern is if one node is connected to many or only dishonest/bad nodes.  As you say though, the connections are random by default so an attacker cannot target a specific node and would have to be really lucky to effectively impact an honest node. This still would not affect the network as a whole however.

I would say Bitcoin is rotten to the core when there are only 2 honest nodes against 1 million dishonest.
Without understanding the technicals behind it many people would be scared to death.


Isn't this the same as saying: "if everybody on earth would be fair and honest we would not need jails?"

192.227.139.229 is at ColoCrossing https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/?q=colocrossing. 45 nodes at that DC. If they have a power outage or worse, that's 45 nodes gone. Just an example of course and who knows how accurate bitnodes is, but different geographic locations help for sure.

If you can miss 2$ a month and plan to run a node for two years, you are getting in to Raspberry Pi territory (with an external HDD), if you're internet plan allows for it. (An indication of data volume: http://192.227.139.229/vnstat/index.php?if=venet0&graph=large&style=light&page=m ;) )

anyone doing the "purchase VPN" scheme.. please realise its better to have 7000 nodes in 7000 locations rather than 20,000 in 5 VPN locations... think about it.

P2Pool should become more user friendly, once it is done, every miner should move to P2Pool, ultimate decentralization is done ;D

It would actually be the "purchase VPS" scheme, not purchase VPN as a VPN is only a way to connect to the internet and is not capable of running a full node.

Your point is true, however there are a large number of both data centers and VPS providers so as long as you do not buy up a bunch of VPSs at one location from one provider this would not be that big of an issue

There is one more reason - the possibility of the DoS: the fewer full nodes you have the higher chances the network would be killed if someone attempts to DoS it.

I think the number of nodes would need to decrease substantially before this would become any kind of serious risk. When a "normal" site is DDoSed, their network infrastructure will be stressed, however when someone attempts to DDoS a decentralized network, the attacker will need to use much more resources to put a similar level of stress on the network

Yes, I agree that Bitcoin network is far from this situation. It was an argument for two nodes network.

iam running a full node. its a nice way to support the network. i guess when the price rises again we will see more full nodes. and also we sill see some improvements with the sync of the bitcoin core client (3days to 3 hours).

25 GB is not a problem in my view.


2 Terabyte - 90 USD:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Station-External-Desktop-Drive/dp/B00C9TEL46/ref=sr_1_1/275-3057177-7963732?ie=UTF8&qid=1414215364&sr=8-1&keywords=2+terabyte

There's always the torrent method of getting the block chain:
https://bitcoin.org/bin/blockchain/

I would say it's probably because of the size of the blockchain. New adopters won't want to invest so much time in download over 30GB as there are no incentives/benefits whatsoever to running a Bitcoin node. So that leaves the people that truly believe in Bitcoin. I used to run a node on my notebook, but not anymore, since my connection wasn't fast enough for the size of the blockchain. Now, I have a couple nodes running on VPS systems, since they're relatively cheap to run.

Well, you should consider the fact that we're here participating in a system where we run our own infrastructure, providing a payment network where nobody simply can block a payment or an account because they don't like you.

If you want to use bitcoin, you can use a light wallet, or bitcoin core, or a webwallet. The safest solution is to keep private keys in your own posession. If you chose to run the Bitcoin Core, then the initial sync might take some time. Perhaps 1 to 2 days. But I don't see how that's a big problem. You install the software, and then let i run till it has completed synching. Most people these days have solid broadband internet connections, and most harddrives are 500Gb and up. Once you have synched the blockchain, you only need to connect sporadically to keep up to date with the blocks, or just let it run on your computer..

If you're more dedicated, go for a vps or dedicated server.

People go to banks all the time and initiate the process of making a bank account. First you have to physically move in meatspace to the designated branch. Which can be stressful enough in itself. Then you have to wait in line, being exposed for all kinds of unnecessary chatter and viruses and bacteria that other humans carry around.

After you get to the counter, you have to present your ID, this is photocopied, and then you go through whatever process the bank require to open the account. Then you have to reverse the process of getting physically to the bank, and once the most preferable geolocation of your representation in meatspace is restored, your home, you have to wait for days before you finally get whatever card the bank wants to offer you.

Finally you can use your bank account.

In addition, if you do something nefarious, like trading at localbitcoins (oh gosh - you're such a criminal!), or if you just do whatever that's outside getting a paycheck from your employer and shopping at main stream shopping centers and approved online stores like amazon, you risk your entire account being discontinued (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2k709k/barclays_terminated_my_account_and_froze_my/).

In addition, the bank will know about every purchase you do. And the statements on your bank account will be given to the tax-authorities every year. And if you happen to have a relative outside the borders of your nation (oh my gosh - you must be a terrorist financier!) don't be surprised if the transaction is delayed for days and days until it's finally cleared, no mentioning how much stress that causes for the recipient.

So what we have here, is some of the best opportunities in human history to transact easily and quickly between free individuals on planet earth, without getting an anal examination by our overlords, and although it usually takes less time to download the blockchain than to get the payment card from your evil bank which might cause any kind of troubles on a bankers whim, people still complain..!

Synching the blockchain is really no problem, you just install the software, and then it all happens by itself, you just wait. And while you wait, you can do all kinds of interesting things, like for instance call a friend and go for a hike in the woods. Bring a tent and fishing equipment. I promise, once you get home, you're now part of the most cutting edge international financial payment system in existence!

Written eloquently, Crypto. Thanks for bringing things back into perspective.

I will be running my node until the day that Bitcoin dies.

Technically, as long as your node is up bitcoin can't be considered dead :P.

Sorry, I was looking for the cheapest and I didn't look at the HDD.
I personally use this one :

https://i.imgur.com/nMbLif2.png

It is damn super fast and mining Monero with it greatly reduce the bill.

Ha. good point  :)

I guess I was trying to say that my node will be running for a long time.  The bandwidth isn't a big deal.  Right not it is about 100 Gb/month upload and ~30 Gb harddrive space.  I'm running my on a older computer that powered partially by solar during the day so actual power draw is minimal.

Is it just me or are most people on this post missing the point?

The problem is not whether we can host more nodes or not. The problem is that it is not being done, even if it is easy. Why? because there's no incentive for most people, in fact there's negative incentives to do it. Aka blockchain bloating and no immediate benefit.

The idea that saying things like "people ought to support the network our of a none financial sense of reciprocity" is sadly naive, even if fair.

Mining is also more centralized than ever and this is becoming worse over time with not expectation of reversing. Right? Since all the rewards go to miners, node hosting becomes charity.

How do we solve this?

Well, the first question is, does it matter?  What are we losing with the centralization of nodes? is it a worse problem than the centralization of mining?

if we decide more nodes is better than less, than one option is to say, something like 10% of mining rewards per block go to a random node, or are distributed among x random nodes.

Sort of like Darkcoin's Master Nodes are financially rewarded.

Would this centralize mining more or make some miners go out of business? I don't know. I frankly think Mining is unnecessary, Proof of Stake and similar innovations have already solved this problem, or atleast made it less of a problem.  particularly with appropriate early distribution of funds.

Always 7000 nodes here ... no problem : https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/

$40 a month is a lot to spend on a full node. There are much cheaper options out there (some as low as $15 per year). As of now, you really do not need a very high performance computer in order to run a full node so there is no real reason to get such a high performance VPS

The problem are the 30GB required and more to come. If you have a 40GB HDD for $15 per year, please share it because we never heard about it.
Like I said, I use my VPS to mine Monero. For a long time I was making a profit from it, now it helps me reduce the bill.

no one can make a change to it :'(

Hm.. I've toyed with the tought of mounting disk space over the network on VPS'es with too little disk-space. Would that be feasible? :)

Yeah, you can get a nice dedicated for $40 these days... Linode is way overpriced.

I just use Linode and DigitalOcean. What are the way cheaper and better VPS that you talk about ?

I remember one really cheap VPS, I ordered one to try, 2 months after the company has gone bankrupt and I lost my money.

I have seen people offering to run a node in the name of someone who pays them as little as .04 per year - they would essentially be doing all the 'legwork' to running the node, but the buyer would essentially be covering all the financial costs

Since your post down to 6500.. 

I'm not sure if the bitnodes script sees all nodes either.

But I've never seen anyone address how many nodes should the network really have to be big and strong? Do we need 10000? 100000? More geo-distribution?

What I was saying is that for $40 you can get a much better cheap dedicated than what vps providers offer. I just checked and Linode is now cheaper than it used to be, it seems competition from Digitalocean made them rethink their plans and pricing. So forget what I said about linode being "way overpriced"

The number of full nodes will go up and down throughout the day (and week, and month) so a change like that in a short period would not worry me.

The fact that many nodes are located in people's homes means that many does will be turned off at various times for a number of reasons (going to sleep, going to work, going on vacation, power going out, internet interruption, needing to use computer for some kind of data/CPU intensive process) only to be turned back on once the reason it was turned off is resolved.

The distributed nature of the network means that when one node goes down/off, the other nodes will take their place

No problem.
It's true that Linode used to be overpriced but since about 1 year they matched DigitalOcean performance.
Amazon AWS is still a little bit more powerful for the price but I can't stand their interface.

I am working on a project to raise the node count.

Price is one thing. Availability and service is another thing.

For example, if your node goes down on a friday evening, will there be staff to get it back up before monday morning? Perhaps you even run other stuff on that VPS/dedi, like a homepage or other services.

Geographical location is another issue. In the US, prices are low, because of very high competition between datacenters and hosting companies. In addition, it must be assumed that the NSA eavesdrop on all communications on US soil, if you bought a VPS with your cc, the NSA knows your home ip (they derive it from the connections you make to that VPS), they know the ip of your node, and they also most likely know all the other purchases you've done with that cc. Ie. you're operating in bright daylight in sight of everyone.

If for whatever reason, there was a crackdown in the US on bitcoin, it would not be unlikely that all dedi and VPS'es running a bitcoin node in the US would be shut down. In addition your cc might be blocked, and you might get a visit of a 3-letter agency. I'm not saying this is going to happen, I'm just saying it might happen.

In such a situation, it's important that there's plenty of nodes outside the US. For that very reason, it's good for node-operators to operate nodes outside the US. To aid in more decentralization and robustness for the network.

As for Linode, please do not forget the bitcoin businesses that were the victims of their poor security practices. infamous Linode hack (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/02/linode_bitcoin_heist/)

Security is our number one priority and has been for over eight years. We depend on and value the trust our customers have placed in us.

Yet, one of their web-based systems was compromised, with the result of a large stash of bitcoins vanishing.

Relevant read: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=73640

One could however argue that it was stupid to keep bitcoins on those servers in the first place, and I agree - but the treatment from Linode's side was less than stellar imo.