[Guide] How to run a Bitcoin Core full node for under 50 bucks!

[ranochigo]

I don't think that's right. These are all general-purpose computers in different shapes and sizes. And you just said Pi only has passive cooling out of the box, while random old laptops or PCs have active cooling all set up and ready to go. Computers don't really care if they run 24/7 or not, as long as they're not running at the thermal limit all the time, and even then, they're quite durable.

It depends. I've had terrible experiences with certain laptops when running them for extended period of time. I would rather not stress laptops (particularly their battery) by having them run 24/7, because they are not designed with that in mind. You are far more likely to have it fail on you than a brand-new Pi and even if it does then you only have to replace the USB charger.

The reason why Pi has passive cooling is because it doesn't really need active cooling system, perhaps save for a little extra heatsink on top of it. You are more likely to save more money going with a Pi, at least I've never really seen any computers that would be far cheaper than Pi (less than $50??) and isn't a headache to use. You're probably either going to find it grossly inadequate for Core or have a certain component fail on you after a while, that is the problem with buying old hardware, I've had quite a fair bit of experience in this regard.

Anyways regarding the cost, if you need to be concerned about the cost of running a node then you should probably spend your money elsewhere. Not everyone has to run a node, especially if you can't really afford it financially.

[HCP]

That's the great thing about all of this... there are plenty of ways to skin the proverbial cat   Plenty of options to get up and running in a way that suits your budget, your physical space requirements, power limits, mobility requirements etc.

Pi's tucked away behind your monitor, an old repurposed desktop sitting in your closet, you daily driver laptop etc etc... modern technology is great

[n0nce]

Shameless bump (not really): I just stumbled across a very old thread.

It's funny to look back at things and see how predictions by highly influential people eventually panned out.

This was basically exactly 7 years ago now; and Bitcoin was around for a bit over 6 years at that point in time. So kind of half-way between today and the beginning of the Bitcoin network.

"I want to be able to run a full node from my home computer / network connection." Does anybody actually care about that? Satoshi didn't, his vision was home users running SPV nodes and full nodes being hosted in datacenters.

Poor Lauda..

This is rather a pointless discussion which was led more than once. Why would anyone fight this?
Saying that we still have 'some time' is not a strong argument here. Should we think about doing the fork once we hit the cap?

Believe me, once we hit it, using Bitcoin will be very painful.

At the moment of writing, blocks are mostly full and I'm not feeling lots of pain.

I, for one, am very happy that we can still run Bitcoin on $50 worth of hardware after such a long time. And I'm still convinced this is what really sets Bitcoin apart; true decentralization.
Sorry for the off-topic ramble, but I figured this historic little piece of information does fit in this topic and maybe it will motivate someone to build their own $50 node over the weekend!

[Welsh]

I, for one, am very happy that we can still run Bitcoin on $50 worth of hardware after such a long time. And I'm still convinced this is what really sets Bitcoin apart; true decentralization.
Sorry for the off-topic ramble, but I figured this historic little piece of information does fit in this topic and maybe it will motivate someone to build their own $50 node over the weekend!

Yeah, although its not for everyone. As most of us now by now, not many people want true decentralisation since it usually comes with a cost. By that I mean, when we ask the majority of the population they probably aren't going to be willing to pay for something just to use their own money, they would rather have third parties which handle that for them. Obviously, we don't need everyone to be running a node.

As for the costs, to be honest except for rising electricity costs I would like to think the total cost will continue to go down. The only issue that could become a problem is the storage, so far we've been pretty much following Moore's law with our increases in hardware capability, although I've definitely noticed the last year or so that most hardware is now becoming too powerful for our means, and therefore we won't use it a lot. Obviously, hard drives are a little different to CPU's, and graphics cards. Although, I do think that the general consumer won't be requiring much more than four terabyte (TB) hard drives in the future. Hell, I probably have over 50TB among all the hard drives I've collected over the years, but I don't use half of them. My main machine only has a 1TB hard drive in it, and that's no where near full.

So, storage is probably the biggest concern for Bitcoin self hosted nodes, at least full nodes is that the storage requirements might outpace what general consumers usually have or require. I don't think it'll be an issue for the capability we have in manufacturing larger hard drives, but it'll be what is available to the general consumer at a decent price, which the lesser demand probably means a lot of people could be out priced. Thoughts?

[BlackHatCoiner]

By that I mean, when we ask the majority of the population they probably aren't going to be willing to pay for something just to use their own money, they would rather have third parties which handle that for them.

Not wanting true decentralization doesn't mean hell-bent to lose self-custody. I believe the majority of the users, excluding those who're here just to trade, use SPV clients as it's the easiest solution with the least risks.

Those who leave them on centralized exchanges haven't understood what they've bought either way.

Thoughts?

I think the storage cost has little matter. Running non-pruned full nodes definitely helps the network, but if the user doesn't want to buy an extra hard drive, they can enjoy the same features by running a pruned node with txindex=1.

[garlonicon]

by running a pruned node with txindex=1

You cannot use those two options together, you have to choose one of them. You can kind of reach that by importing every output as yours, but you probably should not and focus on UTXO scanning instead, if you really need pruning.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You cannot use those two options together

What's the problem with keeping everyone's UTXOs and dumping the blocks? I'm just saying that you can have the same benefits even if you're planning to run an SPV server, without keeping the entire chain, but only the outputs.

Sure, if it's personal use set it to 0.

Edit: My bad. You're right. I hadn't ever tried it, to be honest, but I thought it would work. Could you explain me why a pruned node can't index all the transactions? The blocks/index is less than 40 GB and it could be used if one wanted to run an SPV server.

[DaveF]

You cannot use those two options together

What's the problem with keeping everyone's UTXOs and dumping the blocks? I'm just saying that you can have the same benefits even if you're planning to run an SPV server, without keeping the entire chain, but only the outputs.

Sure, if it's personal use set it to 0.

Edit: My bad. You're right. I hadn't ever tried it, to be honest, but I thought it would work. Could you explain me why a pruned node can't index all the transactions? The blocks/index is less than 40 GB and it could be used if one wanted to run an SPV server.

In theory it probably could.
All of us keep going around in the same circle here with people and I hate to be the grouchy person BUT used drives have gotten so cheap I am at this point just e-wasting & recycling 500GB and below because just about anywhere in the Americas (North - Central -South) and most of the EU and ASIA it's actually cheaper to find them locally then to have me ship them.

If you want to run a node get a 1TB drive and....run a node. If you don't want to, then don't.

-Dave

[garlonicon]

What's the problem with keeping everyone's UTXOs and dumping the blocks?

All you need is mapping transaction hash to block hash (you can also use block number, but then you cannot check stale blocks). If you have that, then you can query raw transactions on a pruned node. The reason why it is not available by default is that "pruning" means "I want to reduce my disk usage", but "txindex" means "I want to store everything". It is kind of illogical to "store everything" and to "reduce disk usage" at the same time, so it is not allowed by default.

But as I said: just map transaction hashes to block hashes and you will get that functionality. Or scan UTXO set (there is even scanutxoset command; or even importprunedfunds if you really want).

[BlackHatCoiner]

The reason why it is not available by default is that "pruning" means "I want to reduce my disk usage", but "txindex" means "I want to store everything".

Sure, it's oxymoron and there's no essential utility unless one wants to store all the outputs, but no blocks for some reason. That reason could perhaps be to run an SPV server with less expense?

If you don't want to store everything, but verify everything for your own good: Run a pruned node.
If you don't care of storing everything or you want to go beyond personal use: Run a non-pruned node.

[BlackHatCoiner]

First of all, how do you index transaction which isn't exist on your device? Block which contain transactions already pruned/removed.

During IBD, can't you index the transactions and then remove them?

[DaveF]

So, storage is probably the biggest concern for Bitcoin self hosted nodes, at least full nodes is that the storage requirements might outpace what general consumers usually have or require. I don't think it'll be an issue for the capability we have in manufacturing larger hard drives, but it'll be what is available to the general consumer at a decent price, which the lesser demand probably means a lot of people could be out priced. Thoughts?

It's valid concern, but IMO time for initial block download (IBD) is bigger concern. I expect some people who interested to run full node discourage time for IBD could take some time.

Drive prices are falling insanely fast even with all the chip shortages and shipping issues all over the world. I just got an 18TB drive (on sale) for $300 1 & 2 TB are under $50.
While I know that may be a lot of money for some people in parts of the world those are new prices. I have seen 1TB used for under $5 in places.

Time to download is probably not as big a concern then people who have bandwidth amount limited plans.

Yes with 1meg download speed it can take close to 2 months to download the entire blockchain. BUT if you only have a 100GB max download a month total before extra billing or fees kick in then do you pay more or take 6 months to download?

-Dave

[ABCbits]

Drive prices are falling insanely fast even with all the chip shortages and shipping issues all over the world. I just got an 18TB drive (on sale) for $300 1 & 2 TB are under $50.
While I know that may be a lot of money for some people in parts of the world those are new prices. I have seen 1TB used for under $5 in places.

I agree, although it's different case if you need to host full node on remote server.

Time to download is probably not as big a concern then people who have bandwidth amount limited plans.

Aside from bandwidth, you also need to consider CPU speed, RAM capacity and HDD speed. HDD speed can be partially solved by moving chainstate directory to SSD or allocate very big RAM to Bitcoin Core (IIRC at least 8GB).

[DaveF]

Drive prices are falling insanely fast even with all the chip shortages and shipping issues all over the world. I just got an 18TB drive (on sale) for $300 1 & 2 TB are under $50.
While I know that may be a lot of money for some people in parts of the world those are new prices. I have seen 1TB used for under $5 in places.

I agree, although it's different case if you need to host full node on remote server.

Time to download is probably not as big a concern then people who have bandwidth amount limited plans.

Aside from bandwidth, you also need to consider CPU speed, RAM capacity and HDD speed. HDD speed can be partially solved by moving chainstate directory to SSD or allocate very big RAM to Bitcoin Core (IIRC at least 8GB).

Going to have to disagree with you here.

With unlimited bandwidth I can sync a node from scratch on an 4GB RPi4 with a 5400 RPM USB drive in under a week.
Using an SSD will get that down to 4 days or so. Literally just did both with Umbrel builds.

Yes if you need it up now, a week is an intolerably long time. If you just want to run a node, you can start it and walk away and come back next weekend and it should be done.

-Dave

[BlackHatCoiner]

Do you mean you want to create the index (TX ID) without storing the content (the transaction itself)? I think it's possible, but i don't see any practical usage.

Me neither. I had probably misunderstood this. Transaction indexing has a purpose when you also keep the transactions, which means when you don't prune.

[garlonicon]

Well, I thought you want to index only non-pruned transactions. Then it makes some sense, but still, enabling those two options together is like mixing water with fire. Because it is not that you cannot query transactions: you can, but you need to always provide block hash, when doing that without txindex.

[n0nce]

I agree, although it's different case if you need to host full node on remote server.

I strongly believe that full nodes do belong in people's homes; that's why I made this guide and why I'm so hell-bent on reasonably small blocks.
Just like laws are kicking in in the EU right now, and probably other places in the future, laws could be put in place that categorize node operators similarly to payment providers, requiring some kind of license or KYC. Hence, cloud providers might either hand out this sort of information if queried or just forbid to run e.g. Bitcoin Core.
It's also in general a bad concept running 'decentralized' software on 'centralized' servers. Isn't this what altcoins are doing? Spinning up a few AWS instances and calling it decentralized?

Aside from bandwidth, you also need to consider CPU speed, RAM capacity and HDD speed. HDD speed can be partially solved by moving chainstate directory to SSD or allocate very big RAM to Bitcoin Core (IIRC at least 8GB).

That's right: my last node install was on such a 'budget build' as described here and it was taking too long, so I installed 4 extra GB and it went super fast. My internet connection wasn't great, but RAM still was the bottleneck. As you guys are saying; $50 can be a lot of money in some places, so I believe it's great to see that Bitcoin still manages with pretty low system requirements and such a low cost barrier to 'entry' as a node runner.

For now, I would like to share my experience with a node that I've setup a few days ago. It is one of my nodes that needed a bit of maintenance; it was quite cluttered and had outdated software so I rebuilt it from scratch. I will also post a guide about it soon (OpenSUSE node walkthrough).
The hardware is a laptop motherboard with 4GB RAM and 2 500GB HDDs.
After it had taken almost a week to achieve ~40% sync, it was going super slow; around 1-2% a day, so I thought it may be a good idea to just plop in a second stick of RAM and see if it does anything. I kind of expected something to happen, but I was astonished at the speed it was going at afterwards! The HDD arm was moving much less now (audible difference); I suspect it was swapping a ton before, and the log was literally flying.

Here's a graph of some measurements I took; I let you guys guess at which point in time I upgraded the node from 4GB to 8GB



The speed at which it's going, makes me think it should be able to do a full sync in 2 days or so (from scratch); even though it's using a HDD.
Sooo.. all these modern hardware - based super fast syncing nodes.... (Pi 4 8GB + SSD + nice case) I think they actually gain most of their speed from the larger RAM and not from the SSD (which I was considering buying for this node actually)! Very impressive; that HDDs are actually this well suited for a fast IBD. I had not expected it.

[n0nce]

Yes if you need it up now, a week is an intolerably long time. If you just want to run a node, you can start it and walk away and come back next weekend and it should be done.

I agree, although IMO a week for sync is long enough to discourage few people even if they don't need it up quickly.

Why that hurry, though? I am confident if there was a strong demand for faster IBD, we would have many more people working on and campaigning for stuff like checkpoints on the blockchain.

It's also in general a bad concept running 'decentralized' software on 'centralized' servers. Isn't this what altcoins are doing? Spinning up a few AWS instances and calling it decentralized?

That makes sense, but there are few use cases where you need to use remote/centralized server. For example, small business or non-profit organization who run BTCPayServer.

Correct, yes. In that case, the node may be required to run the payment server on top of it, but those nodes shouldn't be considered part of the 'secure, reliable backbone' of the network, in my opinion.

[AnotherAlt]

I am sorry if this is a bullshit question. I am a newbie (Not in crypto). Why do you think I should run a Bitcoin core wallet while there are many wallet/exchanges like Binance and Coinbase? I know it's essential if you hold a bunch of Bitcoin. But, I have such a tiny amount of Bitcoin (below $1K). I think I can hold them on Binance and stake it to accumulate more satoshi. Are there any benefits of running a full node? I know that sometimes Running a lightning network node can give you some benefits which also not profitable (less than $1/month). Suppose I installed a full node. Why do I have to run it 24/7? What are the benefits? I have a Ryzen 3 3200G CPU+ 16GB Ram + 2TB HDD PC. Can I install the full node in this setup?

I am sorry, but I am interested to learn. I appreciate any help you can provide.

[ABCbits]

I agree, although IMO a week for sync is long enough to discourage few people even if they don't need it up quickly.

Why that hurry, though? I am confident if there was a strong demand for faster IBD, we would have many more people working on and campaigning for stuff like checkpoints on the blockchain.

Some people simply not patient. Idea for faster IBD such as UTXO commitment already suggested several times, but receive little support/interest.

That makes sense, but there are few use cases where you need to use remote/centralized server. For example, small business or non-profit organization who run BTCPayServer.

Correct, yes. In that case, the node may be required to run the payment server on top of it, but those nodes shouldn't be considered part of the 'secure, reliable backbone' of the network, in my opinion.

It's not like we can tell a node is part of the "secure, reliable backbone" unless they use popular VPS which it's IP range is known without VPN or Tor.

Why do you think I should run a Bitcoin core wallet while there are many wallet/exchanges like Binance and Coinbase? I know it's essential if you hold a bunch of Bitcoin. But, I have such a tiny amount of Bitcoin (below $1K). I think I can hold them on Binance and stake it to accumulate more satoshi.

TLDR, better privacy and you actually have control over your Bitcoin. Although you can use SPV non-custodial (with Tor/VPN) such as Electrum to receive similar benefit.

I have a Ryzen 3 3200G CPU+ 16GB Ram + 2TB HDD PC. Can I install the full node in this setup?

Yes.