That's not the definition of a node.
A node is a software on a computer that enforces the Bitcoin consensus rules. To do that it has to be able to communicate with the rest of the nodes in the peer-to-peer network so that it can download and verify every single transaction from block 1 to the tip.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is why asking questions is very important, because it's obvious I have read the wrong and process the wrong concept from a wrong source. I recently layed my hands on the
mastering Bitcoin material, which i think some of the replies in the comment section correlate with what is been written there.
That's the reason why I said your definition is wrong. We don't define node based on how smoothly it is being run. You can run a full node on a smart phone or the least efficient hardware out there and it still be a full node as long as it can download and verify everything.
Understood. Now I get the entire definition concept.
We don't really categorize them as "full nodes" and "miner nodes".
A node is a peer in the P2P network so the concepts we have are only "full nodes" and "miners".
A full node is what I explained above (a peer downloading and verifying blocks and has a mempool) and a miner is someone who uses a full node to construct a candid block from its mempool to mine (compute hashes over and over until the desired hash is found).
Wait!!, If I understood this right, is it that the miners uses same node as the ones used by regular users like me that decides to a run node?, But they further use some machines that aid them creating Blocks?.
The way Bitcoin is designed as a whole and the way the rules are ensures that. Bitcoin is a combination of miners, nodes, market, developers, etc.
For example the blockchain is immutable because the rules that are enforced by the nodes dictate that we follow the chain with the most work and it all works based on the assumption that the majority of the network is honest.
So if a minority of miners decides to change history (make chain mutable) they'd fail because they can not produce more work than the rest of the network combined.
So can we practically say that miners are a major attributite to Bitcoin security level?.
There are ways to run full node on mobile devices, such as using ABCore or UserLAnd (where you need to install Linux and Bitcoin Core). But usually it's deemed impractical due to making the device very hot or require decent device to operate smoothly.
Is there a thread that has been created on the forum, that explains how this can be done. I have a mobile device just to try it out.
Not all are full nodes. 95% are pruned nodes.
infact maybe only a very few are full nodes because downloading the full block requires a lots of disk space, so most of the people in the challenge choose pruned nodes, in order to manage their storage capacity.
So, about this pruned nodes, can a new user specify the exact blocks he wants to start downloading from ?, Or the whole thing performs the calculation manually thereby selecting random blocks to start from?.