User bitcoin nodes are useless to the network

[darkv0rt3x]

Hello,

I just read this article and I would like to know more opinions about it. How accurate is it. Is it true that a node that is not actually processing transactions, is of no help for the network? Is it true that only economic nodes are important? Can a situation explained in this article happen and our nodes (not economical) can't do nothing about?

https://medium.com/shiftcrypto/we-need-bitcoin-full-nodes-economic-ones-fd17efcb61fb

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[Charles-Tim]

Also try to change the topic tilte, like to like 'is it true that a node that is not actually processing transactions, is of no help for the network'?
Truly full nodes are important as they verify/validate 'unconfirmed transactions in the mempool, blocked mined and transactions that are confirmed along side the mined block'. But, not all nodes are full nodes, full nodes are nodes that consist of the bitcoin blockchain, that can verify blocks and transactions. But, the ones that are not full nodes also are important, like the SPV nodes, without this, it will be add for people to make use of bitcoin as to download the blockchain required large memory space that will be a disadvantage that will not make people to use bitcoin if not supporting SPV wallet that rely on server. The SPV node is an indispensable part of the network too, and the other one which is not full node is mining nodes (not solo mining node) without the blockchain. Although, truly nodes that are not full node are not helping the network as it does not verify/validate transactions confirmed and block mined, but they are very important, more specifically the SPV nodes.

Transactions are the most important part of the bitcoin system. Everything else in bitcoin is designed to ensure that transactions can be created, propagated on the network, validated, and finally added to the global ledger of transactions (the blockchain).

[ranochigo]

All of the nodes process transactions if you're going to define it as them validating the transactions. Non-economic nodes, as defined in the article, are important as well as they will be helping with the redundancy of the network and still enforce protocol rules.

While the article has a point, it really has little to do with the actual reality of Bitcoin. If you're using a service with a centralized server, the server has to accept the invalid block as well. It probably won't. But that is just how it can be if you're relying on someone else to tell you which blocks are valid and which aren't. SPV clients requires a diverse set of connection to be listening well to the network and prevent any sort of sybil attack so without having a significant control over the hash rate of the network, it can't be executed against SPV clients. So will the scenario in the article happen? Very unlikely unless everyone starts using a few centralized services.

Running a node does primarily benefit the user who is using it though, the scale of the network as it is right now would bring marginal benefits to the network.

[stompix]

Is it true that only economic nodes are important? Can a situation explained in this article happen and our nodes (not economical) can't do nothing about?

He had to use the term "economic" nodes, why, I have no clue, it's full nodes and that's all that is to it. And if the situation is this one:

Some big miners decide that it’s time for bigger blocks, because more transactions mean more fees in total.
The two big economic nodes think that this is a good idea, as cheap transactions are good for business.
The idle nodes don’t like that and threaten to not accept bigger blocks.

no, it will not happen.
There are no big economical nodes and small idle nodes, I'm amazed this article comes from the guy that makes bitbox, and here is one of his articles where he advertises that and suddenly forgets everything about big economic nodes, just look at all his other articles:

To preserve the decentralized nature of this monetary system, I think it is important that everybody can run their own trustless Bitcoin node, preferably on cheap hardware like a Raspberry Pi.

Bottom line, to address your question, yeah full nodes are important, every single node out there is, there is security in numbers in case of a sybil attack for example that would cripple communications between legit nodes in case of a large one (highly improbable at current numbers).
But really, rather than this kind of attack, I'm more concerned why some people who obviously have enough knowledge on this subject would write this kind of articles, normally I would call it shilling for their product but it's so misleading I don't think it bring a positive even for their gear. Weird.

[darkv0rt3x]

Well, I need to digg a little bit more about the differences between regular nodes, full nodes and any other type of nodes which takes such labels. I have a node running with a full 350Gb blockchain on a RockPro64 board. Is this considered a full node? I only did transactions out of my node when I want to play with some trading in exchanges every now and then, but other than that, when I need, I create my own raw transactions, sign them on an offline node (of mine) and broadcast them with my online node. I know this is anywhere near of practical but I like the thinking that I do things my way and on my terms (fees, amounts, timing, etc) and and don't need any extra (3rd party) wallet software or even worse, online services of wallets.

But yeah, I found it weird that things were put like that in a very superficial way and without any or very little argumentation/reasoning behind the statements made there.
Still, I want to understand what makes a node a full node, a relay node or any other type of node. If anyone can put it simple to me, I would appreciate. Also, I think many others would also appreciate.

Thanks
dark

[pooya87]

Is this considered a full node?

Full verification node is a client that downloads and verifies everey single block starting from block 0 (aka genesis block) all the way up to the last block.

Still, I want to understand what makes a node a full node, a relay node or any other type of node. If anyone can put it simple to me, I would appreciate. Also, I think many others would also appreciate.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5229765.0

[franky1]

although non economic nodes do help decentralise the network. thats all they do
its more about data. not rule change control

it is a supposed safety net to ensure that the economic nodes(ones running bitcoin accepting businesses) dont co-ordinate a change of rules without majority. however we seen this in 2017. they had and succeeded to push the non-economic nodes not wanting the NYA off the network. because having so many nodes allowing to accept standard blocks would have ruined their chances of changing the network rules
yep the economic nodes clubbed together and set their own rulechange ploy as part of the developers need for segwit

the power of non-economic nodes is limited.
not only can the power players (dns seeders, economic nodes and pools) just push others off the network. but also when economic nodes want to change something.. because they are the businesses/exchanges people use. people end up following the economics lead just to stay on the network that will accept their transactions
(no point having a coin if a service cant see it)

and so the economic nodes can end up winning anyway

yes even exchanges can control the path pools go. because pools cant spend their coins if they are not on the same network as the major exchanges/services they want to spend rewards on

user nodes and pools end up being sheep to the main service nodes(exchanges/dns seed)

..
in short. if a normal non-ecomomic node wanted to change the rules.. they would need to get the economic nodes onboard
if the economic nodes wanted to change the rules. they can just change the rules and let everyone upgrade to their ruleset after

non-economic node changes create altcoins
economic node changes create network upgrades

[dkbit98]

I just read this article and I would like to know more opinions about it. How accurate is it. Is it true that a node that is not actually processing transactions, is of no help for the network? Is it true that only economic nodes are important? Can a situation explained in this article happen and our nodes (not economical) can't do nothing about?

Looking at luke.dashjr chart we currently have around 86,000 nodes with 6,900 listening Bitcoin nodes and that data from bitnodes.io and this article is not really accurate.
Running full node is not expensive and it's not very complicated but you need to have some motivation to run it, maybe to improve your privacy or something else.
Article is outdated and there are many simple and easy implementations for running full node like myNode, Samourai Dojo or Umbrel.
This are some minimum Requirements for running your own full Bitcoin node:

- Desktop or Laptop computer or Raspberry Pi with minimum 2GB RAM (starting from $35)

 - Hard Drive (starting from $13 per TB)

 - Internet connection with good upload speed and unlimited traffic (starting from $5 per Month)

[Ucy]

I believe the consensus enforced by economic nodes("full activity nodes") have to be based on early Bitcoin standard... better still standards/features Satoshi wants for Bitcoin Network... Standards like transparency, censorship resistance, deflationary currency, permissionlessness/trustlessness, immutablity, anonymity/privacy, network consensus,  one vote per computer etc.
By the way, things could be redesigned in a way that encourages  most network participants  to become economic nodes (possibly nodes in hundreds of thousands/millions) without compromising on transactions speed and efficiency. More economic nodes would mean better decentralization and security.

[hatshepsut93]

How accurate is it. Is it true that a node that is not actually processing transactions, is of no help for the network?

"Processing transactions" is an incorrect term when speaking of Bitcoin, because Bitcoin does not work like centralized payment systems do. Every full node verifies all transactions on the blockchain, so they can know that the coins that they use are not fake. Lightweight wallets also do these verifications, but they have to get the data from full nodes. Because of that, even if a full node isn't making any transactions, it's still helping other nodes, because when there's too little nodes on the network, there are risks that some can attack other nodes by having their own malicious nodes connect to them.

[ranochigo]

Lightweight wallets also do these verifications, but they have to get the data from full nodes. Because of that, even if a full node isn't making any transactions, it's still helping other nodes, because when there's too little nodes on the network, there are risks that some can attack other nodes by having their own malicious nodes connect to them.

Most full nodes actually gets the data from other full node. Lightweight wallet can verify the validity of a transaction but that relies on the full node which it is connected to to be honest.

Assuming that your lightweight client uses bloom filter, it has been disabled in the recent releases by default. I find that the benefits gets marginally lesser and other MITM attack methods are far more viable and less expensive. 9000 nodes is far from little, doesn't hurt to get more either.

[pooya87]

Lightweight wallets also do these verifications, but they have to get the data from full nodes.

They can only do a small number of the total verification needed to validate a transaction though. Basically since the SPV clients don't have the UTXO set and there is no way of building it or downloading it without becoming a full node, they only rely on security of PoW so they only check the proof of work of each block header they download and then make sure the transaction is inside that block.
Otherwise they don't check double spends, signature validation, amount check, weight check, sigop count, script evaluation,... that a full node would do.