What does it take to run a full node?

[tread93]

Good Afternoon Folks,

I hope all is well. With all that has been going on w/ the FTX SBF business it gives me peace of mind knowing that my coins aren't on any exchange. Its a shame for all the people that lost all of their money, they learned a very valuable lesson. Having the peace of mind of running your own full node would certainly be the best case scenario for any Bitcoiner I would think.

With that said, I know this is probably a question that has been answered many times but what is required to effectively run a full node of your own? What kind of equipment & knowledge does one need to have and how much would this investment cost? Are there other benefits you get from doing this other than holding the keys to your coins?

I know that these questions are probably all very newbish questions but I do not currently run a full node. I am genuinely interested on what it would take to do so & would love some expert advice in this space. I'm looking forward to seeing your responses, thank you in advance!

Cheers,

-TREAD

[NeuroticFish]

what is required to effectively run a full node of your own? What kind of equipment & knowledge

As hardware you need a decent device that you can leave running for long time, preferably 24/7, but not necessarily, since after the initial (long) blocks' download, afterwards it would be rather quick (of course, it depends on how many hours or days you don't sync). What is important is to have a big disk (preferably more than 1TB) also if you don't have too much patience then SSD would be better.
There is however, this topic you may want to read (Cheap Node Self Hosting: Just because you CAN does not mean you SHOULD) telling about the hardware choices. The worse the hardware, the more time you'll waste. So you better use decent hardware.

Knowledge: it depends on what you want. Starting Bitcoin core alone is not difficult. Configuring it is not difficult either. If you want more (eg. I have Bitcoin Core, and Electrum Server so I can use my hardware wallet with Electrum and also I have a block explorer), you need at least patience and some basic skills in following instructions on installing this or that (usually under Linux), but if you're not too picky there are tutorials too.

I'll get back to te system. While most of the things are made for Linux, nowadays you can put a Linux subsystem under your Windows 10 or 11 (maybe less, but lower Windows is no longer safe to use). So you don't have to worry much.

----
All in all, I think that running your own node is not that difficult. And if one just wants to avoid the FTX like problems, he doesn't necessarily need a node; just get a hardware wallet and use it with Electrum and you're already way better than most.

[Charles-Tim]

Following this would be helpful: https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/ and read the full node guide.

Enjoy this also: Connect to full node on Trezor Suite using Electrum server. Especially reading the extra links.

[NeuroticFish]

Following this would be helpful: https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/ and read the full node guide.

This is a very good idea since I missed quite some points on hardware side. And although it tells only about some few gigabytes of space, I think that such size is for pruned nodes and I strongly suggest to just keep the full blockchain, which nowadays is more than 400 GB or, if also txindex is on, then it's over 500GB.

[bkelly13]

In my opinion, not an experienced one, use a Linux system and a Raid 10 drive system. 

[sabre_labs]

I've setup many bitcoin ndoes in the past, mostly running linux and it is fairly simple to do if you follow the instructions online and use a vanilla flavor linux distro.

That said, if you just want to run a node to have wallet and a node to verify transactions for your wallet, you might want to just install a node on a Windows machine as the GUI there will make things much simpler. Depending on your HDD space and time you intend to keep the node online, you might want to run it in a pruned mode to save on disk space. The initial download of the blockchain is needed as well and will be the thing that takes the most amount of time (anywhere from 24hr to a week).

[hZti]

If you want to learn the process how to set it up the best option is still a raspberry pi. If you just want a full node, there are already a few out of the box ready full nodes for sale.

[Wind_FURY]

Following this would be helpful: https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/ and read the full node guide.

Enjoy this also: Connect to full node on Trezor Suite using Electrum server. Especially reading the extra links.

Plus this Medium article/blog/guide in how to actually install, and run a full node for newbies/inexperienced users by StopAndDecrypt. It's the best written guide about the topic in my opinion.

StopAndDecrypt was also accused to be gmaxwell's alt-account by many anti-Bitcoin trolls in Twitter and Reddit because they couldn't win in a technical debate against him. A good person to learn from.

https://stopanddecrypt.medium.com/a-complete-beginners-guide-to-installing-a-bitcoin-full-node-on-linux-2021-edition-46bf20fbe8ff

[DaveF]

Budget is also important, you can as been shown do it for $50 or $60. You can do a nice RPi build for a couple of hundred with a SSD and a full PC build with RAID for $500.
Each has it's advantages and disadvantages.

There is also learning, do you want to go to the store, buy a prebuilt PC, download 1 file and go. Or, do you want to compile it from scratch on a linux box you built yourself.

Nothing is wrong with any method, but if you don't want to compile anything and don't want to spend a lot, it is a different answer then I have $749.00 and just want it to work.

-Dave

[tadamichi]

With that said, I know this is probably a question that has been answered many times but what is required to effectively run a full node of your own?

Really not that much. It’s pretty easy and cheap to run a node nowadays. You either build one yourself (easy with the right tutorials) or you get one ready to go(more expensive and less learning, but fast). But i would advise option a, as it’s actually fun and feels rewarding to do it yourself.

What kind of equipment & knowledge does one need to have and how much would this investment cost?

A raspberry pi or old laptop, an sd card and 1tb ssd should suffice. Raspberry pis are hard to get at the moment, but sometimes it’s possible to reserve one by just contacting an official retailer found on the official website. This should come around 150-200€, but it’s also possible to do for cheaper. It might seem complicated to setup at first but with the right instructions like raspibolt and a community for when you need help it’s definitely doable. So not much knowledge is needed beforehand, you’ll acquire it while building and when asking questions to understand how it works.

Are there other benefits you get from doing this other than holding the keys to your coins?

Better privacy, you enforce the consensus rules and decide which rules run on your node and no need to trust third parties anymore. You get a whole copy of the chain, you can resist changes you don’t agree with and verify everything yourself. Helping the integrity of the network and allowing yourself to become sovereign.

[348Judah]

Running a full node would have been so easy and a common thing to do if it had not been technically and capital intensive, in fact all of us would have been running a full node but we consider those that has a higher value of bitcoin and those that does not mind the cost to be running it at most, but you will need a high speed internet connection, steady power supply, data, storage and the technical acquisitions of connecting the blockchain network entirely, all this are the challenges that makes only but few people to be running a full node but you can also achieve something similar to that without downloading the entire blockchain, just get a hardware wallet or install a cold storage.

[Charles-Tim]

but you can also achieve something similar to that without downloading the entire blockchain, just get a hardware wallet or install a cold storage.

Running a full node is still an online wallet, but it gives privacy, than to connect to a central server on SPV wallets or light clients, but there are ways you can run full node with hardware wallet or connect to Electrum server with hardware wallets.

Cold storage wallets are SPV wallets which also offer no privacy.

If you do not want to download the whole blockchain and still want to run full node, you can go for pruning which requires less than 6 gigabytes. But the disadvantage is that you have to resynchronize your wallet with blockchain if you import wallet file (wallet.dat) that has data synchronized that is not done on your prune node before.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

If you do not want to download the whole blockchain and still want to run full node, you can go for pruning which requires less than 6 gigabytes. But the disadvantage is that you have to resynchronize your wallet with blockchain if you import wallet file (wallet.dat) that has data synchronized that is not done on your prune node before.

With BitcoinCore prune node, you will have technical trouble too if your node, your wallet is not shutdown appropriately. Such as if your electricity supply is lost suddenly and when you re-open your wallet, restart your node, you will have issue.

You won't have the technical issue by electricity shutdown if you run a Bitcoin full node. It saves lot of time if you use a full node, than a prune node.

[Wind_FURY]

Running a full node would have been so easy and a common thing to fo if it had jot been technically and capital intensive, in fact all of us would have been running a full node but we consider those that has a higher value of bitcoin and those that does not mind the cost to be running it at most, but you will need a high speed internet connection, steady power supply, data, storage and the technical acquisitions of connecting the blockchain network entirely, all this are the challenges that makes only but few people to be running a full node but you can also achieve something similar to that without downloading the entire blockchain, just get a hardware wallet or install a cold storage.

It should be mentioned that that's already with design decisions made by the Core developers to preserve anti-fragility, decentralization, and keep hardware requirements as low as possible, while taking the trade-off of accepting moderately larger blocks through Segwit upgrade. Other networks gave them up because they want "speed" now, without care and without a long term vision.

[franky1]

It should be mentioned that that's already with design decisions made by the Core developers to preserve anti-fragility, decentralization, and keep hardware requirements as low as possible, while taking the trade-off of accepting moderately larger blocks through Segwit upgrade. Other networks gave them up because they want "speed" now, without care and without a long term vision.

oh will you just once try and step back from your device when this subject is mentioned. take a break and think before picking up your device.. do some research when you pick it up.. and THEN AND ONLY THEN reply to people talking about the subject.. you have had years of opportunity to do the research, so please take the time to do it.

..
now to respond to your ignorance
over the years the debate has not been about expanding the blocksize purely to bloat it with data for the sake of filling it with data

its about increasing the blocksize for the sake of increasing transaction count

now if you do your research.. such as this:


what you will see. if you use your eyes... you will see segwit has NOT! i repeat NOT helped increase the transaction count

..
now what you will learn with further research is that core devs have admitted that 4mb of data is not harmful to the network and not an overweight of average peoples hard drives
in short they have said it is not the 1990's where 1.44mb(a floppy disk) is a limit of inconceivable amount that should not be passed
we are also not in the 1990's of slow internet

average PC's have hard drives in TERRABYTE sizes and internet is fibre/5g

yep 4mb blocks are not apocalypse scenarios. but if you remove the cludge code of misrepresenting a "byte"(vbyte) with miscalculations. to instead go back to counting bytes where bytes were counted as byte like in 2009-2016.. but with the 4mb blocksize

4mb would have offered 4x tx capacity compared to 2016

now please stop following your party line/hymn sheet of your social club. and do some research and actually understand bitcoin. not your buddies network preferences.

the only purpose and function of segwit. is a gateway tx format to allow bridging to other networks.. it was never meant to be a solution to multiply onchain transaction counts by upto 4x.

[bkelly13]

What about configuring the drives as RAID-x?
As a RAID novice, it seems that the read/write speeds will increase by having the data spread across multiple drives.  And if the configuration is right, then a bad drive may be simply swapped out with no down time.  Using SSDs in a RAID would be quite fast.  Saves on power compared to hard drives.

Comments?  Details on the advantages of the various RAID configurations and what they really mean for a full node?

EDIT
On thinking more about this and reading more about RAID, I realize my ignorance as to the hard drive / SSD  bandwidth needed by a full node.  I am guessing that once the data, blocks, are written they are never changed.  Relatively recent blocks need frequent reads, and older block still need reads for transaction for bitcoins that have not been moved for a while.

How would you describe the read/write load on the drives containing the blockchain data? 
What about the system drive?  I presume it will always be separate from the data drive, but also presume some amount of read/write temporary data there.  Does memory size play a significant role?  My guess is to use a minimum of 8 Gig and probably 32 is better.

[Wind_FURY]

Do I hear the troll again, with his name-calling, gaslighting, and disinformation? Is he again putting words in my mouth, claiming that this is "what you're saying" and call you ignorant? Haha.

Plus it's been debated many many times before Segwit, and? The big blockers/Roger Ver-lovers like the troll LOST. The troll will say this, he will say that, everything going in circles.

Newbies, if you want to learn, listen to the troll, then read this blog, https://medium.com/hackernoon/moores-observation-35f7b25e5773

[franky1]

grow up.

actually try to include some actual hard data evidence not some social blog post a buddy referred you to

do you know the average internet speed in 2002
do you know the average internet speed in 2012
do you know the average internet speed in 2022

your refered blog is saying 2x-4x slower growth per decade

how about hard drives
i had a pc in 1999 with a 3.6GB hard drive and they were saying 4GB was the then limit of consumer/retail hard drive capacity

do you actually have stats of the growth rate since the millenium to back up your silly assumptions that things have slowed down to a snails pace and so bitcoin should not onchain scale at all in a decade

here ill give you a hint
1994-1998 28.8k modem (4 year)
1998 2000 56k (2 year it 2x)  
2000-2005 internet was 0.5mb (5 year it 10x)
2005-2010 internet was 5mb (5 year it 10x)
2010-2015 internet was 35mb (5 year it 10x)

oh its 2022 now and people can get gigabit internet speeds
(oh and i was low balling numbers because 7mbs internet was available in 2010 and 50mbs internet was achievable in 2015)


if you are using your blog you think internet speed growth on a chart would look like
  __
 /       not       /
|               __/

however the opposite is true
technology is not dying/stifling, becoming limited. its.. wait for it GROWING
and bitcoin should too..


lets make thing very simple
if 7tx/s was acceptable in 2010 when internet was 7mb/s
with 5G and fibre in 2022 offering upto 1000mb/s do you think we should still be stuck at ~2000tx/block average (3.3tx/s(2k/600))

or do you think we should be on more transactions per block by now seeing as the internet and hard ware is much more than a decade ago

[Wind_FURY]

The troll assumes that all of the internet connections that will join the network will be very fast, and low latency. He's assuming that the network was designed to be like Netflix, streaming gigabytes of data everyday from their centralized servers. Bitcoin, as designed by the Core developers, is to give as much people as possible to run a node without owning high-end hardware, and without needing access to high-speed bandwidth. It is designed to be ROBUST, with as little attack vectors as possible.

The troll says "my buddies", but who are his buddies? The big blockers? Roger Ver? The people in the New York Agreement who tried to co-opt Bitcoin?

Plus what did the troll say before? That Bitcoin bilaterally split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, and starts calling Bitcoin Cash "is the real Bitcoin" because "the white paper"?

[franky1]

i never called BCH bitcoin
grow up you social queen of false drama


also you mention netflix
did you know the data amount of a netflix video to a users computer..

you will now.. so no future ignorant excuses if you want to scream netflix again..
 now that there are a over 200m netflix users. and they are happy to be receiving video.. they are not screaming "netflix unfit coz internet"

If you are using Netflix to stream a two hour movie then you will use about 2 GB in SD. You will use about 6 GB to stream in HD or 14 GB for a two hour movie in 4K.

SD = 166mb per 10min
HD = 500mb per 10min
4K = 1166mb per 10min

and guess what.. no one is screaming "NETFLIX NOT FIT COZ INTERNET"

as for hard drive space

2010 hard drives were 250gb
2022 hard drives are 4tb


try to use some real world statistics and data and not your diatribe of lies and stupid antisocial stories your girlfriend  told you