From 370,000 Full Bitcoin Nodes to 6,000: What happened?

[coins101]

Proof of stake was an idea put forward by Gavin to Satoshi in order to solve the issue of people creating scripts and endlessly sending transactions to themselves at zero cost in fees or something along those lines.

Bitcoin has something built in that still does something along the lines of proof of stake. I'll have to hunt around for the reference.

Anyway.....there was a paper that said PoS coins needed to use a centralized reference node:  

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113791/neucoin-whitepaper-reveals-first-mathematically-watertight-proof-of-stake-currency

Interesting. I wasn't aware of this. Well I think that it is too late to introduce something as PoS. It is too late to change the fundamentals of Bitcoin.
...

Found a reference:

https://youtu.be/rQ3e1Pzu7iI?t=5m01s

That link is definitely PoW. No reward required  

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[pereira4]

My only hope is that once pruning mode is enabled from 0.11+ we'll have people running nodes that only take 1GB of HDD space and hopefully the Bitcoin Core client doesn't take 15 minutes to open anymore.

[shorena]

My only hope is that once pruning mode is enabled from 0.11+ we'll have people running nodes that only take 1GB of HDD space and hopefully the Bitcoin Core client doesn't take 15 minutes to open anymore.

If your client takes long to load, create a bitcoin.conf file[1] - if you dont have one already - add the following lines and modify (as in lower) the values as needed. Purning will most likely not change anything in that regard.

Code:

# How many blocks to check at startup (default: 288, 0 = all)
checkblocks=288

# How thorough the block verification is (0-4, default: 3)
checklevel=3

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin#Sample_Bitcoin.conf

[SISAR]

It seems to me that there needs to be a distinction between "running a full node" and running Bitcoin Core.

There may have been 370k people running Bitcoin Core, but how much benefit were they providing to the network? Running Bitcoin Core long enough to sync the block chain and send some bitcoins or view your balance provides very little benefit, especially if you haven't opened port 8333.

Not true. The moment your node connects to other nodes it will go though data agrement process with each of other nodes. Any node sending data that does not match your copy of blockchain will be IP banned for 24 hours. Nodes that agreed on blockchain will strengthen their view on what is correct data and will isolate node that is sending wrong data. All that happens in just few minutes after running Bitcoin-Qt and it makes no difference if connections to other nodes are outgoing or incoming. Also, other nodes can sync from your node even if your node is not accepting incoming connections. If your node is at block X and it connects to node (outgoing connection) which is at block X-500 the other node will start syncing from your node if no other node it is connected to provides data or they all provide wrong data.

The only real benefit of nodes that can accept incoming connections is improved decentralization. In the most extreme case, there would be just 1 such node and all others would connect to just that 1 node which would have ultimate control over traffic.

If you run the node just until it is synced then eventualy send coins but shut it down afterwards that would make traffic analysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis) more complicated. Ideally, nodes should drop connections to all other nodes at some random intervals and not connect to same nodes again for yet another random interval. Also, transactions should be broadcasted and relayed to random number of other nodes. Situation where your node is on static IP and is connected to always the same other nodes is the worst possible one.

[neurotypical]

So if you open core to only check your balance every week or so, so basically 10 minutes of the wallet being opened per week.. you are still contributing to the network? because I never leave it opened as it takes way too much resources, when im done I close it again.

[SISAR]

So if you open core to only check your balance every week or so, so basically 10 minutes of the wallet being opened per week.. you are still contributing to the network? because I never leave it opened as it takes way too much resources, when im done I close it again.

Yes, you are contributing to Bitcoin network.

[Lauda]

So if you open core to only check your balance every week or so, so basically 10 minutes of the wallet being opened per week.. you are still contributing to the network? because I never leave it opened as it takes way too much resources, when im done I close it again.

Yes, you are contributing to Bitcoin network.

I'm contributing to the network without any outgoing data? I hardly believe that. In the past 5 days (according to my own monitoring software) I've downloaded around ~900MB and uploaded ~2MB while syncing.
I didn't forward my port. There isn't really some benefit to the network.

My only hope is that once pruning mode is enabled from 0.11+ we'll have people running nodes that only take 1GB of HDD space and hopefully the Bitcoin Core client doesn't take 15 minutes to open anymore.

It definitely does take a lot for it to start on default. As shorena mentioned one could manually edit some settings, however that's not the right way for things to be working for the average user. AFAIK as soon as we have 0.11 we should have pruning (unless it gets delayed again).

[SISAR]

So if you open core to only check your balance every week or so, so basically 10 minutes of the wallet being opened per week.. you are still contributing to the network? because I never leave it opened as it takes way too much resources, when im done I close it again.

Yes, you are contributing to Bitcoin network.

I'm contributing to the network without any outgoing data? I hardly believe that. In the past 5 days (according to my own monitoring software) I've downloaded around ~900MB and uploaded ~2MB while syncing.
I didn't forward my port. There isn't really some benefit to the network.

Download to upload ratio is of secondary importance.

[ranochigo]

So if you open core to only check your balance every week or so, so basically 10 minutes of the wallet being opened per week.. you are still contributing to the network? because I never leave it opened as it takes way too much resources, when im done I close it again.

Yes, you are contributing to Bitcoin network.

You are only contributing to the network if you open port 8333 to allow relaying of transactions and blocks. Otherwise, it will just be downloading blocks from peer which does nothing

So if you open core to only check your balance every week or so, so basically 10 minutes of the wallet being opened per week.. you are still contributing to the network? because I never leave it opened as it takes way too much resources, when im done I close it again.

Yes, you are contributing to Bitcoin network.

I'm contributing to the network without any outgoing data? I hardly believe that. In the past 5 days (according to my own monitoring software) I've downloaded around ~900MB and uploaded ~2MB while syncing.
I didn't forward my port. There isn't really some benefit to the network.

I believe the Core is sending some packets to the peers to get the blocks downloaded. You are only contributing to the network when you have >1 incoming connections.

[codenamethisNutz]

It's crazy how the core got out of hand, and now all we can do is sit around and talk about it as bitcoin becomes less and less decentralized.

[Lauda]

You are only contributing to the network if you open port 8333 to allow relaying of transactions and blocks. Otherwise, it will just be downloading blocks from peer which does nothing

I believe the Core is sending some packets to the peers to get the blocks downloaded. You are only contributing to the network when you have >1 incoming connections.

Exactly. It is just supplying the nodes with some information so that I can download the right blocks.
There was actually a discussion about this back in 2011 or 2012. Some claimed that it was partially useful, while some said it wasn't useful at all. In comparison to a full relay node, or miner it isn't that useful in my view. However, this doesn't diminish their contributions. Running Bitcoin Core for 10 minutes is pretty useless IMO.

A non-listening node contributes by relaying transactions, and also helps with security making sure that violations of the rules are ignored.

[Wexlike]

I'm doing some research on Bitcoin nodes and how to increase their numbers.

As part of that I thought I had better get some reference points. These are the results:



Q1. Can the numbers indicating that there were over 370k nodes be trusted?

Q2. Why was there such a sharp fall in numbers? GPU and then ASICs?

Q3. Is is possible to ever see that number again?

Source for 370k number was worked out from:

http://bitnodes.io

Wow, wir sind nach China und USA No 3 in der Welt, stärker als Russland und Kanada. Nochmal WOW !

Sehr stolz der junge Skywalker nun seien ...

edit

BTC user disclosure runs Bitnodes, the source of the above data. He has answered the questions:

The early December 2013 network snapshots, i.e. with over 100k nodes, are not valid as the crawler at that time took several hours just to complete one full network snapshot and it includes all nodes from addr responses which can be faked or likely stale. Those snapshots were linked to from getaddr.bitnodes.io/SNAPSHOT_NUMBER/ which have been removed since.

With the new crawler released in late Dec 2013, the crawl time was brought down significantly down to sub 5 minutes with considerably good churn rate. I use the churn rate to measure how good a network snapshot is. A value of 0 implies the network snapshot was taken instantly but of course that's not possible. At the moment, we are seeing a typical churn rate of 30+: https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/

Most of the new users are using lightweight wallets like Mycelium oder Electrum. No more hassle with disc space and up/downstreams.

[SISAR]

A non-listening node contributes by relaying transactions, and also helps with security making sure that violations of the rules are ignored.

As far as I know and have observed using traffic analysis tools, non-listening node is a full member of the network. The only thing it can't do is sync up nodes that want to connect to it but again it can sync up nodes that it connects to. Run your node and use getrawmempool command at Console, you'll see unconfirmed transactions listed there. Node is collecting them for itself and to relay them to nodes that does not have some of those transactions in their own mempool, exactly what any sort of full node is doing. If your download and upload values are like 900MB and 2MB that just means your node is receiving new data slower than nodes it is connected to so other nodes are not often requesting such data from your node.

Each node on it's own is a clueless, it needs other nodes to create a consensus but it makes no difference if those other nodes will connect to your node or your node will connect to them so the whole story that non-listening, low upload nodes are less useful is false.

Also keep in mind bitnodes collected data can be easily skewed up or down. I know IP they are using so I can firewall it or I can create a hundred dummy full nodes that will all look like full nodes to outside observer.

[glester]

Probably something to do with the PseudoNode Proxy (Fools Bitcoin Full Node Incentive Program)??

[Coinbanker]

30GB blockchain is hard to download for simple users.
I used to run full node when it was 3GB.

[Emerge]

I'd definitely love to set up a few servers and put up a few nodes,
but standard server HDD or SDD space doesn't cut it, since it's huge nowadays :/

[Lauda]

I'd definitely love to set up a few servers and put up a few nodes,
but standard server HDD or SDD space doesn't cut it, since it's huge nowadays :/

What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me that the standard server storage components do not have enough memory to store the blockchain?
Hopefully you're kidding because we have consumer grade storage components with 4 TB of memory or more. Currently the blockchain is ~41.8 GB big which isn't that huge today.

[Amph]

30GB blockchain is hard to download for simple users.
I used to run full node when it was 3GB.

the problem was always the bandwidth, but it is actually the fact that some country are far behind in technology, so it is not really a fault of bitcoin here

also those same people who are whining about 30gb(not you, i'm talking in general) are the one that will download any game above 30gb on the first day of the release, via torrent...a bit ironic....

you can DL 30gb in less than 10 hours with 8mega connection, 8 mega should be available to everyone in 2015...

[Lauda]

the problem was always the bandwidth, but it is actually the fact that some country are far behind in technology, so it is not really a fault of bitcoin here

also those same people who are whining about 30gb(not you, i'm talking in general) are the one that will download any game above 30gb on the first day of the  release, via torrent...a bit ironic....

you can DL 30gb in less than 10 hours with 8mega connection, 8 mega should be available to everyone in 2015...

Well I do not think that the problem is the speed itself in some places. Syncing times have definitely improved since 0.10.x. However, there are places that have internet with low caps. Some people just can't afford to download the whole blockchain. However syncing takes more time because you have to verify each block (similar to the checkup when opening Bitcoin Core). Random lookups on mechanical disks aren't fast at all.
A stronger computer should be able to sync a bit more quickly.
However, this isn't going to be a problem for users anymore as we are going to have a pruning feature very soon.