Will there ever be any monetary incentives to run a full node?

[Kakmakr]

To be brutally honest... I would rather have a few "pure" volunteers hosting a fully functioning full node, than having 1000s of money farmers running non-productive nodes to reap some kind of monetization. 

We saw what happened during the Bitcoin (BTC) vs Bitcoin Cash fork wars, when people fired up lots of nodes on virtual hosting services (Cloud services) to try and fool the outcome of the fork.

Do we now want people to fire up more of these "fake" nodes ....to just disappear after they received their reward?  Nah, let's stick to what is working for now. 

[1714870589]

1714870589

[zeuner]

Ideally, as many nodes as possible is the main goal.

  This is not a constructive or engineering approach. Any system has optimal parameter values, or an optimal range. An unlimited increase in a parameter is usually never required, and often leads to unnecessary costs, and the effect of the increase is close to zero.
 
  Therefore, it is more correct to set the goal in a different way: for Bitcoin to work reliably, the number of full nodes should not be less than a minimum level of N. Next, we need to find out the value of N, and ensure that the number of full nodes does not decrease below this level.

  Now we have ~10 thousand full nodes. It may well turn out that this is already above the minimum level and further increase does not give any profit for the entire system.

  You think that the number of full nodes should be increased. You could use the numbers to show what will improve in the system, and how much.

Once we are able to define reasonable metrics for the merit of full nodes, they can serve as a basis not only for a more rational discussion about amounts of full nodes, but also for an incentivizaton scheme.

[aliashraf]

To be brutally honest... I would rather have a few "pure" volunteers hosting a fully functioning full node, than having 1000s of money farmers running non-productive nodes to reap some kind of monetization. 

We saw what happened during the Bitcoin (BTC) vs Bitcoin Cash fork wars, when people fired up lots of nodes on virtual hosting services (Cloud services) to try and fool the outcome of the fork.

Do we now want people to fire up more of these "fake" nodes ....to just disappear after they received their reward?  Nah, let's stick to what is working for now. 

Here comes the problem: volunteers, being pure or whatever, don't have a say in the ecosystem, who cares about volunteers being committed to which fork? It is not how bitcoin works.

With most of the full nodes being pushed out of the mining, we are left with an alarming number of full nodes employed in actual use-cases. Above-thread, I've mentioned how important it is to bring back full nodes to mining by decentralizing pools and making it more profitable for miners to build their own blocks from scratch using their own full nodes. Without such an improvement, the problem remains essentially unsolved.

[Wind_FURY]

There are 10987 full nodes according to bitnodes, so even if you pay a small potatoes amount of money like 0.00001BTC, after paying all those nodes you will be out by more than 0.1BTC every period. Nobody's willing to finance that.

10987 should be the current number of active full nodes accepting incoming connections. Just imagine how large this number will be when people get to know there are incentives for running a full node. I am quite sure this number would grow 10x times or more if incentivizing full nodes become true. So that would become around 1 BTC or more and obviously nobody would contribute that amount repeatedly.

Yeah, and none of that was Satoshi's intention when he created bitcoin anyway.

If you want to be compensated for maintaining a blockchain, proof-of-stake coins are your best option--or by running a masternode for coins like Dash, PIVX, etc.  Bitcoin isn't for that.

My technical knowledge of bitcoin has many gaps, and I appreciate everyone's responses here.  I learn good things in threads like this, even if I can contribute very little.

And that is the answer to Will there ever be any monetary incentives to run a full node on bitcoin?

Bitcoin Devs have decided against it, so an altcoin is your only option.

Only corporations will bother running a node as time passes, which is by design once the asics killed the reason for the little guy to run a node.  

You know Kohas797, the choice is for the user. If he/she believes that he/she is incentivized to run a shitcoin's node to receive shitcoin, then OK, run that node. Because you will NEVER get an incentive to run a Bitcoin node. BUT statistics shows there are more actual FULL nodes running in the Bitcoin network than any shitcoin. PLUS, many of those incentivized to run a shitcoin node SELL the shitcoin to BUY Bitcoin.

[zeuner]

There are 10987 full nodes according to bitnodes, so even if you pay a small potatoes amount of money like 0.00001BTC, after paying all those nodes you will be out by more than 0.1BTC every period. Nobody's willing to finance that.

10987 should be the current number of active full nodes accepting incoming connections. Just imagine how large this number will be when people get to know there are incentives for running a full node. I am quite sure this number would grow 10x times or more if incentivizing full nodes become true. So that would become around 1 BTC or more and obviously nobody would contribute that amount repeatedly.

Yeah, and none of that was Satoshi's intention when he created bitcoin anyway.

If you want to be compensated for maintaining a blockchain, proof-of-stake coins are your best option--or by running a masternode for coins like Dash, PIVX, etc.  Bitcoin isn't for that.

My technical knowledge of bitcoin has many gaps, and I appreciate everyone's responses here.  I learn good things in threads like this, even if I can contribute very little.

And that is the answer to Will there ever be any monetary incentives to run a full node on bitcoin?

Bitcoin Devs have decided against it, so an altcoin is your only option.
[...]

No one knows how future protocol change proposals will look like.

The SegWit2x proposal was decided on in favour of full node operators, and against a hard fork. But if a future hard fork proposal will have an effect in favour of full node operators, who knows whether it will receive some traction...

[gmaxwell]

That page is a lie.  It compares inbound reachable Bitcoin nodes to all ethereum nodes.  The vast majority of Bitcoin nodes are not inbound reachable, as there are plenty of inbound reachable ones and being reachable exposes them to some attacks. Total Bitcoin nodes are much larger and ironically 30% of those ethereum "nodes" have fallen out of sync.  So there are 5.6x the number of Bitcoin full nodes as there are in-sync ethereum nodes.

There is also no real capability comparison. Ethereum nodes normally only have SPV-like security-- they blindly trust miners and don't validate the history. There is no exact analogue in Bitcoin.  Their 'archive' nodes do more but also carry a huge amount of cruft too and it's so difficult to run one that even blockchain infrastructure companies have problems doing it.

[gmaxwell]

And what good is a node to the external network , if not inbound reachable.
It might as well not exist, so it does not count in any real sense.  

Pretty much exactly as good as any other node.  Connections can't be initiated in from the internet to them but they connect out and the protocol is symmetric-- it doesn't really matter who called who, it works just the same either way.  (Also some of those that don't accept connections publicly still accept connections privately, e.g. from friends or over tor)

[Wind_FURY]

That page is a lie.  It compares inbound reachable Bitcoin nodes to all ethereum nodes.  The vast majority of Bitcoin nodes are not inbound reachable, as there are plenty of inbound reachable ones and being reachable exposes them to some attacks. Total Bitcoin nodes are much larger and ironically 30% of those ethereum "nodes" have fallen out of sync.  So there are 5.6x the number of Bitcoin full nodes as there are in-sync ethereum nodes.

There is also no real capability comparison. Ethereum nodes normally only have SPV-like security-- they blindly trust miners and don't validate the history. There is no exact analogue in Bitcoin.  Their 'archive' nodes do more but also carry a huge amount of cruft too and it's so difficult to run one that even blockchain infrastructure companies have problems doing it.

Plus they call them "light nodes", which they consider as actual "nodes" in the Ethereum network, but they really don't do anything for the network. Haha. They don't validate and relay transactions/blocks, making sure everything is following consensus rules.

[GGUL]

Are there any studies that show what we get from increasing the number of full nodes?

The functionality seems to be clear. Since the system works smoothly with the current number of full nodes, increasing it will not do anything.

There were complaints about the security of the system. Where we can see what security level is in the current state with the number of ~10 thousand full nodes. What level of security will be at 5 thousand, and what at 20 thousand?

[20kevin20]

There were complaints about the security of the system. Where we can see what security level is in the current state with the number of ~10 thousand full nodes. What level of security will be at 5 thousand, and what at 20 thousand?

Most of the security comes AFAIK when you become a full node yourself. Full nodes cannot be fooled into accepting txs that are not alright, unlike light (SPV) wallets through which you have to blindly trust the information they're giving you..

It's not that we need more full nodes to make Bitcoin more secure, it's just that the more people we have running their own full nodes rather than blindly trusting servers, so the less we have to use trust, the better.

[Filicius]

At this rate, more than incentives there will be disincentives. I have read some news a few days ago, but I think it is old news, about some legislation that could make anyone who runs a node responsible for illegal transactions made via blockchain.

Back to the topic properly said, the incentive of running a node is more about personal satisfaction rather than anything else, it has always been and I suppose that it will always be, unless somebody makes up a way to register and fund it.

[aliashraf]

There were complaints about the security of the system. Where we can see what security level is in the current state with the number of ~10 thousand full nodes. What level of security will be at 5 thousand, and what at 20 thousand?

Most of the security comes AFAIK when you become a full node yourself. Full nodes cannot be fooled into accepting txs that are not alright, unlike light (SPV) wallets through which you have to blindly trust the information they're giving you..

Not a true assertion, as it has been discussed above thread, a properly implemented SPV wallet can protect its user from low-class attacks like what you suggest.

In a nutshell, SPV lets you validate your transactions without having to worry about anybody else’s transactions. It ensures your transactions are in a block, and it provides confirmations (proof of work) that additional blocks are being added to the chain.

If you need more to know how it is possible to do such a verification you should take a look at the concept of Merkle Tree finding out how one can prove that a hash belongs or does not belong to such a tree.
In the bitcoin community, official opposition to SPV wallets is what @gmaxwell mentioned earlier in this thread: SPVs "blindly" follow the chain that are presented to them as the longest/heaviest one, a weak argument, but I'm done arguing with Greg because he becomes mad at me very easily

My opposition to SPV wallets, if it could be called an opposition, is from a different standpoint: I think for some reason, SPV wallets are over-used and it is not good because they don't take part in securing the network while they are pretty much the main user of this security. It is an anomaly by definition.

[GGUL]

At this rate, more than incentives there will be disincentives. I have read some news a few days ago, but I think it is old news, about some legislation that could make anyone who runs a node responsible for illegal transactions made via blockchain.

Well-implemented spv wallet can only be deceived by an attacker-a miner with a 51% hashrate. As we know, such a miner can also deceive full nodes. In this regard, full nodes have no advantage.

Back to the topic properly said, the incentive of running a node is more about personal satisfaction rather than anything else, it has always been and I suppose that it will always be, unless somebody makes up a way to register and fund it.

If this is the case the current topic is meaningless. Why fight to increase the number of full nodes?

My opposition to SPV wallets, if it could be called an opposition, is from a different standpoint: I think for some reason, SPV wallets are over-used and it is not good because they don't take part in securing the network while they are pretty much the main user of this security. It is an anomaly by definition.

Unfortunately, you have not shown how the security of the network depends on the number of full nodes.

[20kevin20]

If you need more to know how it is possible to do such a verification you should take a look at the concept of Merkle Tree finding out how one can prove that a hash belongs or does not belong to such a tree.

I see; thanks for the information. Will look into the concept.

I've read all your posts here multiple times but I don't think I can get to understand something: if SPVs are useless for security but properly implemented SPVs are not prone to attacks, then how are full nodes helping secure the blockchain more than SPVs are? Like, if the latter is not that hard to attack, then (putting privacy to the side) why should one choose full node over SPV?

[aliashraf]

If you need more to know how it is possible to do such a verification you should take a look at the concept of Merkle Tree finding out how one can prove that a hash belongs or does not belong to such a tree.

I see; thanks for the information. Will look into the concept.

I've read all your posts here multiple times but I don't think I can get to understand something: if SPVs are useless for security but properly implemented SPVs are not prone to attacks, then how are full nodes helping secure the blockchain more than SPVs are? Like, if the latter is not that hard to attack, then (putting privacy to the side) why should one choose full node over SPV?

To be precisely clear, I don't think running a full node per se has anything to do with the network security e.g for altruistic purposes, etc. as I've already reminded above-thread, only mission critical nodes with a well-defined incentive mechanism, integrated to bitcoin network function that participate in bitcoin relay protocol worth being counted as a security enhancement element.

The fair question would be what kind of full nodes deserve such a credit? I would suggest two different categories as my immediate thoughts:
First and foremost are functions that won't be ever accomplished without a full node: solo mining supporting full-nodes obviously on top of the list but one could consider network analyzers, heavy-duty payment processors, exchanges, second layer protocols, ...

The second group are nodes run by users with special interests in bitcoin security: bitcoin whales, prominent bitcoin figures, researchers and advocates, ...

The mechanism by which the latter group help in "securing" bitcoin is not functional in terms of blockchain technology but is influential as a socioeconomic factor and it is very important to be treated cautiously and not to be exaggerated as an ultimate factor because essentially bitcoin is not a reputation based system.

I contributed to this thread to advocate in favor of decentralization of mining and promoting mining full nodes a topic that I'm working on for a while.

[zeuner]

My opposition to SPV wallets, if it could be called an opposition, is from a different standpoint: I think for some reason, SPV wallets are over-used and it is not good because they don't take part in securing the network while they are pretty much the main user of this security. It is an anomaly by definition.

The first step towards a rational continuation of this discussion would be to define a (maybe theoretical) attack that is made possible by a lack of full nodes. Then it could be assessed how the success chances for this attack are affected by the number of full nodes.

[pooya87]

~
if SPVs are useless for security but properly implemented SPVs are not prone to attacks, then how are full nodes helping secure the blockchain more than SPVs are? Like, if the latter is not that hard to attack, then (putting privacy to the side) why should one choose full node over SPV?

SPV clients aren't useless for security, they just provide lower level of it. There are certain attack vectors that exist only for SPV clients.
For example imagine during the 2017 shenanigans you were running a SPV node and a chain split (or multiple splits) occurred. Your client is not capable of knowing which chain it wants to follow hence you don't know where your transaction ends up in, so you'll have to trust the node you are connecting to and follow what it follows without any say in it. Meanwhile a full node that verifies the entire blockchain knows the difference between each chain and can easily follow what it wants, so it has full control.
There is also the problem with number of confirmation, during the same time a SPV client has to wait for much larger number of confirmation (100+) whereas the full node doesn't.

[aliashraf]

There is also the problem with number of confirmation, during the same time a SPV client has to wait for much larger number of confirmation (100+) whereas the full node doesn't.

I challenge this claim of you. I tried it out but couldn't find a single reason for an SPV wallet to wait for more confirmations just because of using SPV technology. Please elaborate.

[ranochigo]

There is also the problem with number of confirmation, during the same time a SPV client has to wait for much larger number of confirmation (100+) whereas the full node doesn't.

I think 100+ is an exaggeration, wasn't it close to 30 or so? Even so, the problem will persist for any client that doesn't know the new rules and will still blindly follow the other chain which still follows the older network rules. So the problem wasn't specific to full nodes.

However, my POV is that given that SPV only validates block headers, it still can't be as secure as fully validating nodes and operates under the presumption that the SPV client will not get sybil attacked and the longest difficulty-wise POW chain is valid. I'm not sure how that could be disputed.

But I would like to consider @aliashraf POV as well, have you had a discussion on this on the forum or could you point me to the relevant sources?

[pooya87]

I challenge this claim of you. I tried it out but couldn't find a single reason for an SPV wallet to wait for more confirmations just because of using SPV technology. Please elaborate.

In the top situation when a split has happened, the full node is well aware of the existence of the other chain (it may be 1 block to whatever number) but it will not tell the SPV client so SPV client doesn't know there is a split. The full node is only following one chain (Node A the red chain, Node B the blue chain where circles represent blocks).
* If the SPV client is connected to Node A and its tx is included in a red block it will think that its tx is confirmed without any issue.

The bottom situation is what happens next and there are 2 circumstances:
Under normal circumstance, the assumption is that the stale chain is not going to grow that big so a smaller number of confirmation is enough. It usually is one or two blocks though.

In any other time (like 2017 example assuming there were higher risk of chain split) each of those red/blue chains can grow a lot longer than normal since Node A and Node B may be following different consensus rules, and more importantly Node A and Node B will not switch to the other chain even if it is the "longest".
* So now the same SPV client above thinks its tx is confirmed in the red block while connected to Node A with a chain that doesn't grow and doesn't reorg while the rest of the network is building on top of blue chain with the green blocks and SPV client's tx may have been double spent already without it knowing.

I think 100+ is an exaggeration, wasn't it close to 30 or so?

The number depends on the situation and the risk and the amount but you are correct, according to bitcoin.org the number during emergencies is 30.
My logic was this:
Imagine in 2017 if a small number of miners continued building on top of a chain that rejected the SegWit blocks. This invalid minority chain could grow for a day before they gave up on wasting their money. A day is ~144 blocks and small hashrate can not build 100 blocks that fast.