What is stopping people from running their own full node?

[Bunker Hosting]

Recently setup a full node and it wasn't as challenging as I expected. I am wondering what is stopping more people from spinning up their own full nodes?

For me it seems not as many people care about the network, as they do about the price. I am wondering what you guys think, is this due to people not being aware of how important nodes are? Or due to the "technical" challenges they may face?

[bitmover]

Recently setup a full node and it wasn't as challenging as I expected. I am wondering what is stopping more people from spinning up their own full nodes?

For me it seems not as many people care about the network, as they do about the price. I am wondering what you guys think, is this due to people not being aware of how important nodes are? Or due to the "technical" challenges they may face?

I can say for myself.
I have a personal notebook and I don't have a desktop computer.
My notebook only has SSD (no HD) and it has only 200Gb of disk space. I simply can't run a full node with my equipment. My disk storage is expensive and scarce .

I believe running a full node is very interesting and I certainly would like to run one for testing purposes.

Additionally, I would be helping bitcoin community by making it more robust and decentralized, but I can't right now.

I read something interesting in keys.casa

Why Run a Node?
The most important quality of Bitcoin is its decentralized nature; there’s no single entity capable of controlling or manipulating it. Because of this, there must be some way to maintain its integrity without trusting any single entity to do so. This is precisely what Bitcoin full nodes are tasked with. However, unlike mining, there aren’t direct financial incentives for running a Bitcoin full node—so why should you run one?

...

Once a node validates a transaction or block, it relays that data to other full nodes so that they can come to a consensus. This responsibility of validating the whole blockchain and enforcing the rules of Bitcoin is what makes a node “full.”

...

Monetary Incentive
Casa is the only company that provides an additional monetary incentive for running a healthy node. When Casa Node users connect their node to Sats App, they’re able to earn bitcoin! Users of Sats App with Node Heartbeats can get 10,000 SatsBack per week for getting 5 heartbeats sent. This serves as a direct incentive to maintain a high node uptime and strengthen the network.

https://blog.keys.casa/why-run-a-node/

This last part is very interesting, Casa gives a small incentive for users to run a node. I don't know if that still exists, but it is worth checking.

Certainly running a full node is one of the best ways to support the network.

[philipma1957]

Recently setup a full node and it wasn't as challenging as I expected. I am wondering what is stopping more people from spinning up their own full nodes?

For me it seems not as many people care about the network, as they do about the price. I am wondering what you guys think, is this due to people not being aware of how important nodes are? Or due to the "technical" challenges they may face?

Zero rewards stops most of us.

I have run them on and off.
They drain resources and eventually I grow tired of running them.
I should do one again as I am flush on pc's and have the resources in place.

[BrewMaster]

because most people who you see are not in bitcoin because they saw a decentralized currency and were attracted. instead a lot of them are here because they saw "profit" and they became interested. and someone who cares about making more $$$ is not going to run a full node and contribute to the network. instead they seek the easiest way possible which is custodial wallets, web wallets and best case scenario is an SPV desktop wallet.
i don't think there is any technical challenge though.

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

I always wondered why miners don't take the block reward and the fee's should go to the node I think that would be a very good way to incentive's people spinning up nodes if they we're to be the node that is first to broadcast the block they would get a reward for it.

Probably some downside to this idea but it would be something to ensure node's which are key parts of the network would be a reward to run.

[BrewMaster]

I always wondered why miners don't take the block reward and the fee's should go to the node I think that would be a very good way to incentive's people spinning up nodes if they we're to be the node that is first to broadcast the block they would get a reward for it.

then how would you decide which node out of hundreds of thousands of nodes that are receiving, verifying and relaying the same exact transaction should receive the fee?
and more importantly how do you prevent someone spending a little amount of money (compared to cost of buying mining hardware) rent servers and run thousands of nodes?

Probably some downside to this idea but it would be something to ensure node's which are key parts of the network would be a reward to run.

there must never be any difference between nodes. otherwise we end up with a centralized network. look at altcoins with same issue.

[PrimeNumber7]

Running a full node is resource intensive. It is really not very technically complex.

I believe most people don’t run full nodes because they can get what they believe to be nearly the same security by relying on third party services and other full nodes to provide security (they use lightweight clients such as electrum). Relying on third party services such as blockchain.com is a bad idea, but I also understand that it is free and gives the appearance of having similar security as running your own full node when looking through the eyes of someone who is unfamiliar with bitcoin. Relying on other full nodes via the use of lightweight clients reduces privacy but again it is free, however it is not sustainable.

[HCP]

This last part is very interesting, Casa gives a small incentive for users to run a node. I don't know if that still exists, but it is worth checking.

Small is right... and also, the only way to sign up for that was by purchasing a Casa Node (essentially a RaspberryPi4 with a 1TB SSD and some custom OS on it)... at the "cheap" price of $399 annual subscription!!?!

In return you can "make" 10,000 sats/week?

[bitmover]

There is no point to run full node when network doesn't scale.

More nodes don't make transactions faster or cheaper, but the validation mechanism more decentralized.

If you don't care about decentralization you can just use Visa. Faster than any cryptocurrency. Bitcoin exists for other reasons.

[joniboini]

Maintenance cost is what stops me. My internet cost are really high and the connection is not so reliable either. While I can spin up some SSD to run a node, the network cost and instability just make it less appealing. I'll probably run one when I move to another city in the next 4-5 years as it means I can find a better network provider (and hopefully way cheaper than my current setup).

[bitmover]

Ask yourself,

Validation only occurs when the # of confirmations increases,
Confirmations only increase when a New Block is added,
Therefore non-mining node don't validate anything ,and are irrelevant to network security.

Non-Mining nodes could all turn off right now, and no one would care.

I will tell you a mind blowing truth:
Miners do not validate transactions.

Full nodes do. Anyone can validate transactions,  a mining rig is  not necessary for that.

https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node
What Is A Full Node?

A full node is a program that fully validates transactions and blocks. Almost all full nodes also help the network by accepting transactions and blocks from other full nodes, validating those transactions and blocks, and then relaying them to further full nodes.

Most full nodes also serve lightweight clients by allowing them to transmit their transactions to the network and by notifying them when a transaction affects their wallet. If not enough nodes perform this function, clients won’t be able to connect through the peer-to-peer network—they’ll have to use centralized services instead.

[rhomelmabini]

As I understand running a ful node you have to download the blockchain from the very beginning, that is a lot of size considering I just have a decent internet connection and using prepaid service will just make my pocket into the world of emptiness. Do this big mining farms was the one that has huge distribution of Bitcoin network that run full nodes?

[NotATether]

I am wondering what the memory requirements are to run a full node. Do they fit in 8/16GB of memory?

[wingfield_crypto]

    People don't want to do anything for free. Rewards are needed. There are very few people who are passionate about crypto and who want to help crypto voluntarily, offering to run a complete node.
    In addition, the resources of the device need to be good to run the node and many of these people do not benefit from a good device.

[hatshepsut93]

I used to run a full node, but abandoned it long time ago. I don't have enough space, got only 750 GB across 2 SSD and I need all of it. I also have a weak CPU, so actively validating blocks negatively affects performance of my system. And for some reason syncing was always painfully slow.

But, I plan to make something like a home server in the future, and I'll likely try to run a full node on it. Maybe other people will be doing too, if blocksize will grow slower than the prices of hardware, more and more people will be able to afford to run full nodes.

[pixie85]

My notebook only has SSD (no HD) and it has only 200Gb of disk space. I simply can't run a full node with my equipment. My disk storage is expensive and scarce .

This last part is very interesting, Casa gives a small incentive for users to run a node. I don't know if that still exists, but it is worth checking.

Certainly running a full node is one of the best ways to support the network.

I read that to run casa you need to pay a fee of 400 dollars a year so that much money would probably solve the problem of not enough space on your laptop and you would not have to buy casa at all.

I've never even thought about buying this thing. It's just too expensive compared to doing the same thing on a computer.

[apachos]

Hi . Is it worth investing in this node? Thanks  https://[Suspicious link removed]/3dQ4Yd7

[BeetcoinScummer]

I used to run a full node. In fact I still am running the node but I've closed off port 8333 because periodically I get denial-of-service attacks from malicious nodes. While core 19.1 is good at stopping most network attacks these attacks could still consume terra bytes of monthly data.

[sandra_x]

I guess most persons are scared that it is so much ,ore complicated, you know, all the technical parts. Also there is the issue of memory spare, a full node is quite large and can actually take significant resource but is a good contribution to the network even if you really do not make money from it.If believe bitcoin is a good thing then it sounds reasonable to support the network

[gentlemand]

Bandwidth. At the slightest hint of any upload my internet is paralysed. One photo takes several minutes and I can't do anything else in that time. I'm also constantly downloading so a node would grind me to a halt from every direction. If I had decent internet then I'd certainly look into it. I've never had it and may never have it so it's not a viable choice for me.

 People don't want to do anything for free. Rewards are needed. There are very few people who are passionate about crypto and who want to help crypto voluntarily, offering to run a complete node.

The reward is your own security.