Full Node Poll

[c_atlas]

I recently read that there are over 100k active full nodes, which is great, but more the more the merrier right?

I ran Bitcoin Core around 2018 for fun and to play around with the json-rpc api, but turned it off a bit later because of the storage requirements. A couple days ago I found an old hard drive lying around so I hooked it up to my desktop and I'm running a full node again! No plans to turn it off, since I'm going to be upgrading my computer and I have enough btc to feel like I should participate in the network.

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[btc-room101]

I recently read that there are over 100k active full nodes, which is great, but more the more the merrier right?

I ran Bitcoin Core around 2018 for fun and to play around with the json-rpc api, but turned it off a bit later because of the storage requirements. A couple days ago I found an old hard drive lying around so I hooked it up to my desktop and I'm running a full node again! No plans to turn it off, since I'm going to be upgrading my computer and I have enough btc to feel like I should participate in the network.

If your a BTC hacker, then its essential to run your own full -tindex block-chain, so that nobody can see what your doing.

But really what we need is low-cost, low-energy miners, to widely disperse the 'consensus'; The current high-power usage of ASIC in China is what is causing fee's to skyrocket.

There must be diversification of 'mining', can't have it all in CHINA. Trouble is CHINA also makes all the Mining HW,

Even the better alt-coins have given up fighting the GPU wars, and have just let bitmain sell equi-miners, and eth-miners; There used to be a real drive to keep the MINING on the CPU, so that everybody could mine & host a node, but now while you point out there are 100k dispersed nodes worldwide, all mining is done is CHina, or the majority, and all user the Chinese HW, which all calls home to china;

Real problem for future of BTC, but given that CHINA owns alll the media conduits, and exchanges, and pools; Nobody can seriously do anything except remain silent.

[bitmover]

But really what we need is low-cost, low-energy miners, to widely disperse the 'consensus'; The current high-power usage of ASIC in China is what is causing fee's to skyrocket.

There must be diversification of 'mining', can't have it all in CHINA. Trouble is CHINA also makes all the Mining HW,

Even the better alt-coins have given up fighting the GPU wars, and have just let bitmain sell equi-miners, and eth-miners; There used to be a real drive to keep the MINING on the CPU, so that everybody could mine & host a node, but now while you point out there are 100k dispersed nodes worldwide, all mining is done is CHina, or the majority, and all user the Chinese HW, which all calls home to china;

Real problem for future of BTC, but given that CHINA owns alll the media conduits, and exchanges, and pools; Nobody can seriously do anything except remain silent.

Things are not that simple.
THere are reasons for mining centralization in China.

In China they have very cheap energy, as they locate some mining farm near the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world.

It is also cheap to buy mining hardware in china. They have the ideal economic situation to mine bitcoin...

[c_atlas]

I recently read that there are over 100k active full nodes, which is great, but more the more the merrier right?

I ran Bitcoin Core around 2018 for fun and to play around with the json-rpc api, but turned it off a bit later because of the storage requirements. A couple days ago I found an old hard drive lying around so I hooked it up to my desktop and I'm running a full node again! No plans to turn it off, since I'm going to be upgrading my computer and I have enough btc to feel like I should participate in the network.

But really what we need is low-cost, low-energy miners, to widely disperse the 'consensus'; The current high-power usage of ASIC in China is what is causing fee's to skyrocket.

There must be diversification of 'mining', can't have it all in CHINA. Trouble is CHINA also makes all the Mining HW,

Even the better alt-coins have given up fighting the GPU wars, and have just let bitmain sell equi-miners, and eth-miners; There used to be a real drive to keep the MINING on the CPU, so that everybody could mine & host a node, but now while you point out there are 100k dispersed nodes worldwide, all mining is done is CHina, or the majority, and all user the Chinese HW, which all calls home to china;

Real problem for future of BTC, but given that CHINA owns alll the media conduits, and exchanges, and pools; Nobody can seriously do anything except remain silent.

Full nodes aren't mining nodes, FYI. Full nodes validate the entire blockchain and then continue to validate and broadcast new transactions as they are received through the network. Miners run full nodes to ensure that the transactions they put into blocks are valid. If they don't do this they are at risk of putting invalid transactions into blocks, which would be rejected by the rest of the network, making their PoW meaningless.

To run a full node, you need a few hundred GB of storage, maybe 2GB of RAM, and a consistent network connection (where you don't have a cap on your down/uploads). Running a mining node is probably at least 2 orders of magnitude more challenging than running a full node.

[btc-room101]

But really what we need is low-cost, low-energy miners, to widely disperse the 'consensus'; The current high-power usage of ASIC in China is what is causing fee's to skyrocket.

There must be diversification of 'mining', can't have it all in CHINA. Trouble is CHINA also makes all the Mining HW,

Even the better alt-coins have given up fighting the GPU wars, and have just let bitmain sell equi-miners, and eth-miners; There used to be a real drive to keep the MINING on the CPU, so that everybody could mine & host a node, but now while you point out there are 100k dispersed nodes worldwide, all mining is done is CHina, or the majority, and all user the Chinese HW, which all calls home to china;

Real problem for future of BTC, but given that CHINA owns alll the media conduits, and exchanges, and pools; Nobody can seriously do anything except remain silent.

Things are not that simple.
THere are reasons for mining centralization in China.

In China they have very cheap energy, as they locate some mining farm near the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world.

It is also cheap to buy mining hardware in china. They have the ideal economic situation to mine bitcoin...

NO they don't have cheap energy anymore.

The real reason is that GIVEN they make all the HW, they got first access. Then when its USED & old they ship it to the west for resale.

Also China, had hydro dams coming online, cheap power in the forecast, now the rivers are running dry last 5 years, this year is terible; so they have moved to coal

Various regions in China are talking about raising rates from 0.02$ ( two cents kwh ) to 25 cents kwh, which is what most of ASIA pays, which is more than say PNW pays ( 0.15 )

Mining centralization? Well we shipped all the manufacturing jobs to China, we shipped all the contracts to make ASIC miners to China, they stole the designs, they built all the miners for themselves, and they took over MINING +67% long ago, today they control the blockchain.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? This is the question?

Sure china had subsidized power, just like housing, just like Russia; Its all poltical north of the yellow-river, you have centralized heating, South you don't. So the miners moved all over the north, and took advantage of this cheap subsidized gov power, now its  game-over;

But the un-winding could take years, and then why should the chinese miners move to the west? They will just go to Mongolia, or Iran, lots of places; Hell USA has the most coal reserves on earth, in the long term picture using the current direction  as a vector, all mining could be done in the USA the entire atmosphere becomes black, but everybody is rich. Musk will be on Mars mining DOGE.

Something has to be done, to have a low-energy cpu based mining strategy, that is equitable to everyone, then fee's are low, and consensus is real, today nobody talks about CHINA controlling consensus its a taboo topic.

Sure +20 years ago China built the MEGA-DAMS, the water level fell, just like in the Western United States, the water problem in CHINA is now critical, that's why MINERS are moving to the COAL regions, but COAL brings massive pollution problems, the CHINESE GOV will not tolerate a few people getting rich, and destroying the health of the majority.

One man, one company owns all. ANT BITMAIN alibaba, taobao, its all Jack Ma, now under house arrest, and the CCP has seized all his assets, now CCP is the owner of you blockchain.

[pooya87]

but turned it off a bit later because of the storage requirements.

If the storage requirement is the only problem you had with running a full node then you should look into the pruning option. You would be running a full node since your client will download and verify everything and will keep a full chainstate but it will get rid of old blocks and by doing that it decreases the amount of space it takes up on your storage device.

This option was added in bitcoin core 0.11.0
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.11.0/doc/release-notes.md#block-file-pruning

You can use it by adding `prune=550` to your bitcoin.conf file, where 550 is the size it will keep in MB.

[btc-room101]

To run a full node, you need a few hundred GB of storage, maybe 2GB of RAM, and a consistent network connection (where you don't have a cap on your down/uploads). Running a mining node is probably at least 2 orders of magnitude more challenging than running a full node.

Anybody can run a full-node on a $10 rasberry clone, many do, with a full node, you can run your own electrum-server ( another 300GB), and thus you can sponsor your own private-wallets for real security to bypass the exchanges and internet blockchain spyware

Mining requires a bitmain S-19 (2500W), that cost about $5k, if you can find one, anything less is a waste of time, at 88THS, that fetch about $20/day, but cost almost that much for the electricity

For compare a RTX-3070 card GPU ETHereum using 100W, can make $5-10/day, but you can't find the cards ( shortage ), just like ASIC miners

Right now the full node is about 400GB, not a problem little sata drives are 1TB for $40

Probably the hardest problem, for full-node is yes, finding that 100% reliable cheap fiber-optic internet, while in ASIA that is a given for $10/mon, USA still seems to be in the COMCAST darkages, where metered lines north of $50/mon are common; Internet all across USA is still dark-ages, I'm sure Austin has fibre-optic to the door for cheap 24/7, but not boonesville, or most USA citys

I would say a 'mining btc is 100x' because of the power cost, and investment cost, all hw is made in china, and all mining is done in china, largely because the USA is still using 1900's technology, and ASIA just went online the last few years, so the infrastructure is new

The ASIC miners for bitcoin sound like a jet-engine when running, so if you don't have a factory, or a private place, its not that easy; 2500-watts at 220v is serious power usage, think a cascade of electric water-heaters.

On another option to run your own full node is $20/mon on a virtual server, buys all, and some like HORIZEN even pay you $40/mon to run the node, its your node, so you can do as you wish, too bad BTC doesn't pay you to run a full-node ?

A good question, is there any BTC clone that pay's you to run a full-node out there??

[20kevin20]

Anybody can run a full-node on a $10 rasberry clone, many do, with a full node, you can run your own electrum-server ( another 300GB), and thus you can sponsor your own private-wallets for real security to bypass the exchanges and internet blockchain spyware

A $10 Pi node does more damage to the network than good. It barely gets to download and verify the blocks, let alone share them with other peers. I've tried it, and it's a pain in the arse.. it barely lets you even download and build Core from source. So why run a node you cannot do anything with? Just to add it up to the total of running ones?

[ABCbits]

No plans to turn it off, since I'm going to be upgrading my computer and I have enough btc to feel like I should participate in the network.

Make sure you allow incoming connection and configure port forwarding on your router to ensure you can contribute.


P.S. Don't forget "Ignore" feature is exist.

[dkbit98]

A $10 Pi node does more damage to the network than good. It barely gets to download and verify the blocks, let alone share them with other peers. I've tried it, and it's a pain in the arse.. it barely lets you even download and build Core from source. So why run a node you cannot do anything with? Just to add it up to the total of running ones?

It depends what kind of Raspberry Pi device you are using for your bitcoin node, and I know some people who are using Pi4 and run full and pruned nodes without any issue, but important thing is to have enough RAM and solid hard drive.
I don't think you can't expect to run Bitcoin on something like Pi Zero or any other devices with less than 2GB RAM, and I am not sure what kind of Raspberry clones he is talking about.
Some old and forgotten computer could probably do decent job of running a node with enough ram.

[mueddib]

Hello

i have had a full node for a long time but i dont think its a profitable to keep a full node for bitcoin and ethereum anymore. instead you can support brilliant projects that really need it.

[bitmover]

A good question, is there any BTC clone that pay's you to run a full-node out there??

And who will pay for that? Are you suggesting to increase transaction fees even more?

People could spam the network with fake nodes trying to make more money out of it. Bitcoin economy is doing fine

Something has to be done, to have a low-energy cpu based mining strategy, that is equitable to everyone, then fee's are low, and consensus is real, today nobody talks about CHINA controlling consensus its a taboo topic.

There is no technology for that. ASIC are as energy efficient as possible, and if someone makes a more efficient GPU/ASIC it will burn the same power as before because miners will just buy more of them to make more money out of it.

There is no way to have a low cost mining available for everyone. If you want to mine you have to pay for it. This is what makes bitcoin safe, this is what proof of work is about.

If mining is equitable for everyone, so it is for big players to attack the network. Which can't happen.

[seoincorporation]

I run full nodes for bitcoin and some other altcoins some years ago, and did it to learn the technical side of bitcoin, was great to learn how to create transactions and push them to the network by command line, and the knowledge I got was priceless.

I remember when I was creating my first transactions, I was thinking 'something should be wrong with the code' because it didn't let me input the fees, but then I understand the fees were chosen by the Inputs-Outputs. This means we don't have to put it as a number we have to calculate it... for example, we have 2 0.005 inputs, then if we send 0.0095 as output then 0.0005 will go as fees.

I stop running it because I learn all that I want to learn, so, I didn't need it anymore.

[c_atlas]

No plans to turn it off, since I'm going to be upgrading my computer and I have enough btc to feel like I should participate in the network.

Make sure you allow incoming connection and configure port forwarding on your router to ensure you can contribute.

Done, thanks! Just verified that my node is accepting incoming connections.

P.S. Don't forget "Ignore" feature is exist.

[NeuroticFish]

It depends what kind of Raspberry Pi device you are using for your bitcoin node, and I know some people who are using Pi4 and run full and pruned nodes without any issue, but important thing is to have enough RAM and solid hard drive.
I don't think you can't expect to run Bitcoin on something like Pi Zero or any other devices with less than 2GB RAM, and I am not sure what kind of Raspberry clones he is talking about.
Some old and forgotten computer could probably do decent job of running a node with enough ram.

When I bought a Pi Zero I thought that maybe someday I'll attach an old HDD and transform it into a node and maybe an Electrum server too, among other (current) use(s).
Then I've read that I went for too cheap/weak Pi. Well, one has to make mistakes in order to learn. So I'll have to buy a better Pi, maybe.

The problem is that I will have to also find a way to connect the HDD to Pi (connectors and maybe cooling too), then the install use to be a pain in the a$$ for me as Windoze user, then I have to be careful with the open ports in the router.. Or buy a proper box with CPU, RAM, cooler and where I can stick in HDDs? All in all, it's something that keeps getting postponed.

Unfortunately right now I tend to better buy a couple of Lego and reading books for my kids than invest into a node that I'm not convinced it'll make a difference.
But maybe someday this will change... eventually....

[20kevin20]

Just realised that in my previous post I haven't replied to the thread itself; I'm running a few full nodes already and I'd happily run one 24/7 only if I had a low power-consuming device such as a phone/Pi to run it on.

It depends what kind of Raspberry Pi device you are using for your bitcoin node, and I know some people who are using Pi4 and run full and pruned nodes without any issue, but important thing is to have enough RAM and solid hard drive.

Yeah, well, Pi's with >4GB RAM and decent storage are way well over $10 so in this price range you only get the Zero, which is practically useless..