Re: Fees for full nodes?

[americanpegasus]

[...]  If not then maybe I would be wise to switch to an SVP wallet instead.

What would happen if everyone did? Food for thought: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Full_node#Why_should_you_run_a_full_node.3F

Read it before; read it again at your prompting.  I want to see Bitcoin succeed; would it kill us to pay full nodes a tiny fee?

 
 
I was just about to make a topic about this when I saw this one. 
 
We absolutely need to compensate full nodes. To not do so is as foolish as to say "people will mine for the good of the network; no need to compensate miners".

[findftp]

I support the idea of small fee for full nodes. After all the full nodes are helping to store all the data which is growing very fast- when I first started the blockchain was only <10GB, now it is approaching 40GB.

Well, enable pruning and get rid of all the useless history!
(It's like cleaning your garage and throw away all the stuff you didn't use last 10 years)
Let someone else keep the full chain for future data archeology.

[CohibAA]

A protocol level change to incentivize nodes would be very difficult, if even possible, for so many reasons.  Anything with incentive will be hit hard by scam attempts.  Also, consensus for changes becomes more difficult as bitcoin project grows.  You can be sure that any BIP to incentivize full nodes would be debated as much as changing block size limits has been.  I don't see it happening, personally.

FWIW, the bitnodes incentive program is now going to be continued past the original expiration date, thanks to 21.

[mookid]

A protocol level change to incentivize nodes would be very difficult, if even possible, for so many reasons.  Anything with incentive will be hit hard by scam attempts.  Also, consensus for changes becomes more difficult as bitcoin project grows.  You can be sure that any BIP to incentivize full nodes would be debated as much as changing block size limits has been.  I don't see it happening, personally.

FWIW, the bitnodes incentive program is now going to be continued past the original expiration date, thanks to 21.

Then maybe in the future we would need something like bitnodes incetive program, but at a large scale.

[coins101]

A protocol level change to incentivize nodes would be very difficult, if even possible, for so many reasons.  Anything with incentive will be hit hard by scam attempts.  Also, consensus for changes becomes more difficult as bitcoin project grows.  You can be sure that any BIP to incentivize full nodes would be debated as much as changing block size limits has been.  I don't see it happening, personally.

FWIW, the bitnodes incentive program is now going to be continued past the original expiration date, thanks to 21.

Then maybe in the future we would need something like bitnodes incetive program, but at a large scale.

One is being developed. It may take a while to implement it, but every journey begins with a first step:

http://spreadcoin.info/news/proof-of-bitcoin-node-white-paper/

[tspacepilot]

I'm currently running a full node and it's taking approximately 1% CPU and approximately 80MB of RAM (obviously these numbers fluctuate).   My incentive for running it is that I want to strengthen the network.  This is more than just a "geeky good feeling".  If you're a part of a community, and you want that community to do well, and that community succeeds, then your efforts are rewarded.  I'm not saying that I don't want tips, I'm just saying that posting a topic to beg for a tip in return for keeping your node going is probably not going to result in a tip, at least I don't expect it to.  Good luck tho.

[David Rabahy]

I do believe in Bitcoin and want to see it flourish; I'm going to continue to run my full node despite no payment.  I was just hoping to get people to think about and discuss the topic.

[tspacepilot]

I do believe in Bitcoin and want to see it flourish; I'm going to continue to run my full node despite no payment.  I was just hoping to get people to think about and discuss the topic.

I do think the discussion is interesting.  In the original description of Bitcoin, everyone who has a wallet is running a node.  Clearly this wasn't practical as the blockchain continues to scale and people wanted to run wallet software on their phones and cetera.  It would be cool if somehow the miners were tipping the nodes or something like that.  Perhaps this is akin to a waiter tipping out their busboy.  I dunno.  I guess I'm just here to follow along with the discussion for now.

[mezzomix]

Well, enable pruning and get rid of all the useless history!
(It's like cleaning your garage and throw away all the stuff you didn't use last 10 years)
Let someone else keep the full chain for future data archeology.

Currently, pruning is not the solution. You should be able to operate a full node with pruning. That means you need to be able to exchange UTXO information and an UTXO hash has to be stored in the block header.

[gmaxwell]

Currently, pruning is not the solution. You should be able to operate a full node with pruning. That means you need to be able to exchange UTXO information and an UTXO hash has to be stored in the block header.

You can operate a full node* with pruning, what you're going on to describe there is UTXO commitments which are totally unneeded for pruning and are of unclear cost, unclear value, and unclear implications.


Unclear cost: rehashing the utxo set for every block, even if maintained in a high overhead efficient data structure is a multiplicative IO cost on running a full node.  Making the initial cost cheaper is essential, but at what runtime penalty is it acceptable?  is 20x acceptable?  If the utxo set is constantly changing, how do people synchronize it from you?  do you have to hold old versions? does a peer have to fetch it only from a single other peer?

Unclear value:  starting off a utxo commitment means you have only SPV security. If you were happy with SPV security; why not run SPV in the first place and dispense with the intermediate step. The answer is that it's only SPV of the history, but where is the dividing line? When someone today says how do you know that the system's creator didn't secretly mint himself a trillion coins-- the answer is because your own node verified it wasn't so.

Unclear implications: with no incentive to not run a committed bootstrapped node, is there any reason to believe the old history would even be _available_ to someone who wanted to do a full security initialization?

(*And in Git master Bitcoin Core relays blocks and transactions, and gives full wallet functionality, minus rescan when pruned.)

[johnyj]

IMO, those who makes profit from bitcoin will have the biggest incentive to setup enterprise level full nodes: Exchanges, mining pools, mining farms, ASIC producers, wallet providers, payment processors, etc...  even those heavily invested in bitcoin should have some full node setup to indirectly support their investment

[RyanLZ]

All nodes should be rewarded in some way, such as 0.0001 Bitcoin per day or 0.1bitcoin shared by all the nodes.

[David Rabahy]

All nodes should be rewarded in some way, such as 0.0001 Bitcoin per day or 0.1bitcoin shared by all the nodes.

Where do these rewards come from?

[David Rabahy]

IMO, those who makes profit from bitcoin will have the biggest incentive to setup enterprise level full nodes: Exchanges, mining pools, mining farms, ASIC producers, wallet providers, payment processors, etc...  even those heavily invested in bitcoin should have some full node setup to indirectly support their investment

I am invested and do indeed run a full node despite the lack of compensation.  If I sell off my investment then I will stop unless it is made to be worth my while.

*If* I were going to be compensated for running a full node then I would gladly pay other full nodes for the services they provide me.  If the full nodes are just going to pay each other then that is way less interesting than having SVP clients, etc., pay for services.

Ah, how about if we "enhance" the code to limit the amount of services provided proportional to the amount of services received?

[coins101]

IMO, those who makes profit from bitcoin will have the biggest incentive to setup enterprise level full nodes: Exchanges, mining pools, mining farms, ASIC producers, wallet providers, payment processors, etc...  even those heavily invested in bitcoin should have some full node setup to indirectly support their investment

I am invested and do indeed run a full node despite the lack of compensation.  If I sell off my investment then I will stop unless it is made to be worth my while.

*If* I were going to be compensated for running a full node then I would gladly pay other full nodes for the services they provide me.  If the full nodes are just going to pay each other then that is way less interesting than having SVP clients, etc., pay for services.

Ah, how about if we "enhance" the code to limit the amount of services provided proportional to the amount of services received?

People have the option to carry many different credit cards. The card issuing businesses make a point of giving away their payment tools. History tells them that people will make use of their credit cards.

Ignoring the desirability of using credit or credit cards, making Bitcoin easy to use and removing as many cost barriers to entry as possible should always be a priority. Any trade-offs on free to use or very low cost to use need to have a good reason to exist.

Who knows, splitting transaction fees between nodes and miners might be an option. I doubt the original design considered that the function of running a node would be separated from mining, so it would be an option to realign the original design to some extent.

[RyanLZ]

All nodes should be rewarded in some way, such as 0.0001 Bitcoin per day or 0.1bitcoin shared by all the nodes.

Where do these rewards come from?

We can change bitcoin protocol so that 0.1 bitcoin extra is issued per day. That is the small price to pay for the security of bitcoin.

[amaclin]

We can change bitcoin protocol so that 0.1 bitcoin extra is issued per day. That is the small price to pay for the security of bitcoin.

LOL
Of course, the majority can change everything.
But do not say "we can" without proving it.

[amaclin]

Where do these rewards come from?

Let us prune the 6 year old utxo! 

[RyanLZ]

Where do these rewards come from?

Let us prune the 6 year old utxo!  

That will save a lot of money. First it will reduce the requirement for our hard drive. Second it will reduce the supply of bitcoin by deleting old coins.

[amaclin]

That will save a lot of money.

This scenario is possible by changing current consensus rules.

In few words. The current code is something like (I am not sure, but do not care):

reward = ( 50 / ( 2^{( block_height / 210000 )}) ) + fees

You can suggest to change this formula to

reward = ( 50 / ( 2^{( block_height / 210000 )}) ) + fees + sum_of_all_utxo_from_block ( blockheight - 420000 )
and all utxo with the age of 420000 mark as non-spendable.

I repeat. This looks like a joke. But this is not a joke. The majority can implement any rules. And this rule is not worse (and not better) than other.