Running a full node(s) anonymously at home

[QuickAccount]

The idea of hosting a full node, or maybe even more then one has been in my head for a few months, I like the idea of running a Bitcoin node or two, and possibly an Electrum node along side those. Laying out the plan I devised would most likely be the best way to get feedback, so here it is.

Each node will be hosted on a laptop connected to one or more external hard-drives, they'll all sit on a rack made to hold miners. They all will have ethernet connection, and will all run simultaneously. That's where the anonymity issue comes into play, I want to run a node but I also don't want my ISP knowing and shutting off my service. I opted to use the WireGuard servers on Mullvad VPN. I'm aware I have to put my trust into them, but this seemed to be the cheapest plan to get past my ISP and privacy issues, other VPN providers are known to share data with Federals, and anyone who subpoenas them.

Did I miss anything in this plan? If so please let me know  

Edit: They will all constantly be plugged in to a surge protector.

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[NeuroticFish]

The internet traffic is quite big for one full node already, if you put more than one, it'll be even greater, and that may attract some curious eyes too.
That's all that came into my mind. Plus, I would do IBD for only one node and then copy the data to all the rest.

[DaveF]

You could also use tor instead of a VPN. Not knowing where you are it's tough to say which would be better.
For the most part the issue with a VPN is you can't connect back to your node from the outside world, since most (all?) VPN providers don't allow you to run services on them.
With tor you can always connect to your node / Electrum using your onion address.
However, tor may require a bit more to configure then just clicking an exe file.


-Dave

[NotATether]

I opted to use the WireGuard servers on Mullvad VPN. I'm aware I have to put my trust into them, but this seemed to be the cheapest plan to get past my ISP and privacy issues, other VPN providers are known to share data with Federals, and anyone who subpoenas them.

Did I miss anything in this plan? If so please let me know  

Why all the complexity? Just run a Tor relay on each computer and hook up your nodes to them. Bitcoin Core has native support for Tor connections, in fact it is possible to configure it to listen only on Tor if you want.

[QuickAccount]

I opted to use the WireGuard servers on Mullvad VPN. I'm aware I have to put my trust into them, but this seemed to be the cheapest plan to get past my ISP and privacy issues, other VPN providers are known to share data with Federals, and anyone who subpoenas them.

Did I miss anything in this plan? If so please let me know  

Why all the complexity? Just run a Tor relay on each computer and hook up your nodes to them. Bitcoin Core has native support for Tor connections, in fact it is possible to configure it to listen only on Tor if you want.

I hadn't thought of that, thank you for the input. Native tor support would make it easier then my previous option with the added perk of being more secure 

[NotATether]

I hadn't thought of that, thank you for the input. Native tor support would make it easier then my previous option with the added perk of being more secure  

VPNs don't make you secure. Not even ProtonVPN (my VPN client whose company I dumped over 500 euros into, and which has recommendations from a lot of other people much smarter than me) can guarantee total security, or privacy for that matter, because they are centralized and have a single point of failure.

If I use a VPN it's only for censorship circumvention. Tor, and alternative distributed networks such as I2P and Freenet, are the only truly anonymizing services.

[Welsh]

The internet traffic is quite big for one full node already, if you put more than one, it'll be even greater, and that may attract some curious eyes too.
That's all that came into my mind. Plus, I would do IBD for only one node and then copy the data to all the rest.

Ignoring the initial downloading of the Blockchain. I can't imagine it bringing too many eyes when compared to what an average household would use for streaming services, and the like. Fortunately, we're in the age of streaming, and people are downloading their content constantly which has meant the traffic usage is much higher. I don't think three nodes would bring too much attention from a privacy stand point. I guess if you're streaming, and running the three nodes it would just add additional usage, but again certain households would use a lot more than the average anyhow.

[QuickAccount]

The internet traffic is quite big for one full node already, if you put more than one, it'll be even greater, and that may attract some curious eyes too.
That's all that came into my mind. Plus, I would do IBD for only one node and then copy the data to all the rest.

Ignoring the initial downloading of the Blockchain. I can't imagine it bringing too many eyes when compared to what an average household would use for streaming services, and the like. Fortunately, we're in the age of streaming, and people are downloading their content constantly which has meant the traffic usage is much higher. I don't think three nodes would bring too much attention from a privacy stand point. I guess if you're streaming, and running the three nodes it would just add additional usage, but again certain households would use a lot more than the average anyhow.

I believe NeuroticFish was referring to the upload usage that would be coming from my network, this would indeed be different from other users on that ISP, but I don't believe it would be enough to cause much attention to be brought onto me.

[QuickAccount]

Successfully got them running last night, using the Tor bridge of course 

[PawGo]

The idea of hosting a full node, or maybe even more then one has been in my head for a few months, I like the idea of running a Bitcoin node or two, and possibly an Electrum node along side those. Laying out the plan I devised would most likely be the best way to get feedback, so here it is.

Depends how you want to use your Electrum server, you may find client which is able to connect to tor address - or not, so you should verify it.
May we use Electrum (I mean desktop client) with onion address?
For Bitcoin Core only using tor is not a problem.

[LoyceV]

I like the idea of running a Bitcoin node or two

If I may ask: why more than one node, if they're the same?

Did I miss anything in this plan?

I've used Mullvad VPN many times, and have no complaints. For my Forkcoin claiming, I used Mullvad to download several full Forkcoin blockchains in a row, and it worked like a charm. Don't forget to enable their kill switch.

The internet traffic is quite big for one full node already

Over the past 106 days, my node (on clearnet) downloaded less than 1 GB per day, and uploaded 23 GB per day on average. I've set it to allow much more, so it's solely limited by the demand for data. For a server, it's not that much. At home, I don't expect my ISP to complain about uploading 23 GB per day continuously, but I also wouldn't want to find out.

I can't imagine it bringing too many eyes when compared to what an average household would use for streaming services

Streaming typically occupies a certain download bandwidth for a couple of hours. A node typically uploads 24/7, and won't look like the average household.

Successfully got them running last night, using the Tor bridge of course  

I've never tried this on Tor: how's the download speed? I use Tor only for browsing websites, which is peanuts compared to downloading/uploading the entire Bitcoin blockchain.

[NeuroticFish]

The internet traffic is quite big for one full node already

Over the past 106 days, my node (on clearnet) downloaded less than 1 GB per day, and uploaded 23 GB per day on average. I've set it to allow much more, so it's solely limited by the demand for data. For a server, it's not that much. At home, I don't expect my ISP to complain about uploading 23 GB per day continuously, but I also wouldn't want to find out.

I didn't know the numbers, thank you for this, very good information.
I think that with this kind of traffic (especially upload) the ISP may start keeping an eye on you the user, since I don't know of too many apps that generate such traffic apart of Bitcoin and the P2P file sharing services (like torrent).

[DaveF]

The internet traffic is quite big for one full node already

Over the past 106 days, my node (on clearnet) downloaded less than 1 GB per day, and uploaded 23 GB per day on average. I've set it to allow much more, so it's solely limited by the demand for data. For a server, it's not that much. At home, I don't expect my ISP to complain about uploading 23 GB per day continuously, but I also wouldn't want to find out.

I didn't know the numbers, thank you for this, very good information.
I think that with this kind of traffic (especially upload) the ISP may start keeping an eye on you the user, since I don't know of too many apps that generate such traffic apart of Bitcoin and the P2P file sharing services (like torrent).

In the post covid work from home world 23GB per day is not that much. Add in the number of people who are streaming things out of their homes to the internet these days it adds even more people to the heave bandwidth users. A few years ago that amount of bandwidth would have been noticed, today not so much.

Now, the flip side of that is that the above statement depend on where you are. If you are in an area where the providers are a bit more limited, then they might care and notice. But them they tend to target the to 1% or 2% of users does not matter what you are doing it's just looking at a chart and saying these people use the most.

-Dave

[BlackHatCoiner]

I've never tried this on Tor: how's the download speed?

Horrible. It took about 3 weeks to finish in my case last year. But, I'm from these few users who're routing through onion layers since the genesis block. Screw you ISP, you're never going to find out.

I have a total of 27 incoming connections and 10 outgoing. So, I presume gigabytes everyday. Is there a way to check that precisely?

[LoyceV]

Is there a way to check that precisely?

This gives the total bytes since Bitcoin Core started:

Code:

~/bitcoincore/bitcoin-23.0/bin/bitcoin-cli getnettotals

Screw you ISP, you're never going to find out.

I was more thinking about the load on the Tor network than my ISP.

[BlackHatCoiner]

This gives the total bytes since Bitcoin Core started:

Code:

~/bitcoincore/bitcoin-23.0/bin/bitcoin-cli getnettotals

There's a command for everything in Bitcoin Core... Love that.

So apparently, I have received 3.6 GB (I made a reset a month ago, with blocks and chainstate backed up, so it must have only counted since I redid the node setup), and I've sent 39 GB.

I was more thinking about the load on the Tor network than my ISP.

What about that?

[LoyceV]

I was more thinking about the load on the Tor network than my ISP.

What about that?

It's hard to find capacity data on the Tor network, but torrents aren't allowed to reduce bandwidth consumption, and as you said, downloading the blockchain took 3 weeks.

[hZti]

I was more thinking about the load on the Tor network than my ISP.

What about that?

It's hard to find capacity data on the Tor network, but torrents aren't allowed to reduce bandwidth consumption, and as you said, downloading the blockchain took 3 weeks.

I guess if many people at the same time download the full blockchain over tor it would actually not that good for the network speed. But after the initial synchronization the data flow is relatively small so there should be no issue with even many nodes that operate over tor.