What is the best node to run at the moment?

I've had to withdraw from the Internet for many months whilst I made some lifestyle changes. I still have a couple of nodes that i update, However, recent problems have led me to believe that I should start a new node, but which one? I've read that the current is deprecated due to potential spam issues. I had though of using knots, but I gather that there may be some issues with that. I want to run the node to support the Bitcoin concept that I knew and loved a few years ago, and also to receive payments for domain name sales. I need to replace the archaic Swift system based on the declining US Dollar. So what do you guys recommend - how good is the current Core for accepting international payments?

Quote from: Jet Cash on February 10, 2026, 09:18:47 AM

~snip

Well If your goal is actually to support Bitcoin as designed and also to accept international payments reliably, Bitcoin Core (current release) is still the safest, most compatible, and least controversial choice and It is not deprecated in my opinion. I know there are countless debates about knots and core but every real OG will always go with Core.

Forget the arguments people make personally I see knots as too controversial for my liking plus if I had one last argument about that topic I'll say Satoshi left us with core so I'll go with core.

Quote from: Jet Cash on February 10, 2026, 09:18:47 AM

I had though of using knots, but I gather that there may be some issues with that.

Yeah. Have you seen https://blog.lopp.net/knot-a-serious-project/, only section "Luke's Security Practices"?

Quote from: Jet Cash on February 10, 2026, 09:18:47 AM

So what do you guys recommend - how good is the current Core for accepting international payments?

Bitcoin Core is still most popular option today. But if you need some automation and process many payment everyday, you may also want to install payment processor (such as OpenNode or BTCPay).

Bitcoin Core still works totally fine, and I haven't tried Knots. But if you're still have a nomadic lifestyle without permanent internet, Electrum is much easier. I run my public Electrum server using Fulcrum on top of Bitcoin Core.

Some full node guides with a second one for Electrum and Tor. Honestly I have never tried this but it can be helpful for your need.
[GUIDE] The simplest Full Node guide ever.
[Guide] FULL NODE OpenSUSE 15.3: bitcoind + electrs + c-lightning + RTL
The road to node: Bitcoin Core extensions, Electrum personal server.

Quote from: Jet Cash on February 10, 2026, 09:18:47 AM

I've read that the current is deprecated due to potential spam issues.

Which "current" one, Bitcoin Core?
Because the only recently deprecated stuff regarding it is its legacy bdb wallet.dat file which can't be loaded to the latest versions w/o migrating it first (v30.0+)
As far as deprecation is concerned, no Bitcoin client is being deprecated.

If you've read it from a political-related topic, you'll only get filtered arguments from each side's perspective.
So DYOR about it (keep it neutral when reading those topics)... it's good that you've asked here BTW.

Bitcoin core is the obvious choice but if you want to try something new and without drama I suggest looking into GoCoin. It is an old project that is still actively developed, and is an implementation of Bitcoin protocol in Go language: https://github.com/piotrnar/gocoin

Quote from: pooya87 on February 12, 2026, 03:08:27 AM

FYI, this full node software load all UTXO with RAM. When i tried it in middle 2022, it use 14.9GB of RAM[1]. Jameson Lopp also tried benchmark it back in December 2025, but always run out of RAM with his 32GB RAM device[2].

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5417193.0
[2] https://blog.lopp.net/2025-bitcoin-node-performance-tests/

Quote from: ABCbits on February 12, 2026, 06:38:05 AM

Quote from: pooya87 on February 12, 2026, 03:08:27 AM

Yeah, that's one of the double edged sword the developer has used. The idea was to have everything in the memory for the maximum access speed. Even the readme says the minimum hardware requirement is at least 32 GB of RAM while suggesting more is better. https://github.com/piotrnar/gocoin?tab=readme-ov-file#hardware

FWIW there is also a chart on the github page comparing the sync time and memory usage:

Quote from: pooya87 on February 12, 2026, 01:18:12 PM

With memory prices where they are you need 1BTC to get more memory Grin

Seriously however, I did try to run gocoin on older hardware with a lot of RAM since I do have a ton of old machines.
Ate up 48 GB of RAM (DDR3 it's old HW) and seemed like it would keep taking more if I bothered to put more in.

For now just running Core 30.2 on all my nodes.

-Dave

Just run Bitcoin Core, I’ve never migrated to any of the others. Lots of people use Umbrel, we’ve seen a move of a not insignificant amount of people to using Knots but I stand by Bitcoin Core. Sometimes it’s just best to go with tried and trusted.

Quote from: LFC_Bitcoin on February 19, 2026, 04:24:46 PM

Lots of people use Umbrel, -snip-

Since you've mentioned Umbrel, you must be talking about its "Bitcoin Node" app
which is their official full node application, not the whole Umbrel OS or hardware, correct?

If so, that's still Bitcoin Core behind with their custom GUI.
In terms of policies, it follows the default set by the selected Bitcoin Core version if the user do not edit its config.