Bitcoin Full Node

[worldinacoin]

Can anyone tell me of the advantages of running a Bitcoin full node?

[1714694136]

1714694136

[Madness]

Can anyone tell me of the advantages of running a Bitcoin full node?

You don't actually earn any money or something simillar the benefits are simply that your helping the network and protecting it.
you can read more about nodes on this article here : http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-nodes-need/

[Buffer Overflow]

Can anyone tell me of the advantages of running a Bitcoin full node?

Yes, it makes the network stronger and more resilient.

[Newar]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Full_node#Why_should_you_run_a_full_node.3F

[CryptKeeper]

Do I understand this correctly, that asic miner aren't full nodes but "lightweight" nodes.

What does it mean? What functionality is lacking with asic miners?

[turvarya]

Do I understand this correctly, that asic miner aren't full nodes but "lightweight" nodes.

What does it mean? What functionality is lacking with asic miners?

Full Node means, that you have the whole blockchain on your computer.
I am not sure, if asic miners are no full nodes. I thought, you would need the blockchain to mine, put thinking about it now, it should also work with getting the needed data from a centralized server.

[shorena]

Can anyone tell me of the advantages of running a Bitcoin full node?

Depends. Some think that running a full node on a home line is harming the network as you usually do not allow remote connections and you are not reliably online. This can be changed of course, configure your firewall accordingly and use an old machine as local server.

A full blown server (or actually cheap VPS with ~2 GB RAM is fine) with a dedicated IP will definitly help the network. Especially if you can get it to a stable state and do not have to restart it every other day.

Do I understand this correctly, that asic miner aren't full nodes but "lightweight" nodes.

Modern ASIC miners are no nodes at all, not even "lightweight" nodes. The light nodes would be wallet likes Multibit or most of the mobile clients. They need a full node to get information about blocks and transactions. A modern ASIC is designed to connect to a mining node that provides information, the ASIC does the hashing and returns information.

What does it mean? What functionality is lacking with asic miners?

From the top of my head: full copy of the blockchain, the ability to relay transactions.

Edit: I think of ASIC miners as an external calculation unit of a full node (the pool). This picture might be wrong though, but I am pretty sure it isnt.

[phillipsjk]

Do I understand this correctly, that asic miner aren't full nodes but "lightweight" nodes.

What does it mean? What functionality is lacking with asic miners?

ASIC miners are generally not nodes at all. With the invention of "pooled" mining, it became possible to separate hash-power from the actual maintenance of the network.

This has some important security implications. If you don't monitor what your hash-power is doing, it can be used to attack the network without your knowledge. Luke-JR invented the "Get block template" protocol to allow pools to disclose the block being worked on to the miner. Luke-JR is also the one who used his pool's resources to attack a nascent alt-coin.

There exists a distributed Pool called P2Pool. This takes a fairly beefy computer to run (At least 1Ghz, 2GB RAM). Most hashers make do with much less.

Edit: running a full node uses more bandwidth as well: mostly depending on how many connections you allow. My node with up to 64 connections and P2Pool (16 connections) (and namecoin) was using about 100GB/month.

[Agestorzrxx]

Can anyone tell me of the advantages of running a Bitcoin full node?

Security.

[CryptKeeper]

Do I understand this correctly, that asic miner aren't full nodes but "lightweight" nodes.

What does it mean? What functionality is lacking with asic miners?

Full Node means, that you have the whole blockchain on your computer.
I am not sure, if asic miners are no full nodes. I thought, you would need the blockchain to mine, put thinking about it now, it should also work with getting the needed data from a centralized server.

Thanks for the explanation! It's now clear, asic miners don't need a blockchain, IMHO the pool servers must have one because they provide the work for hashing.

[CryptKeeper]

Do I understand this correctly, that asic miner aren't full nodes but "lightweight" nodes.

What does it mean? What functionality is lacking with asic miners?

ASIC miners are generally not nodes at all. With the invention of "pooled" mining, it became possible to separate hash-power from the actual maintenance of the network.

This has some important security implications. If you don't monitor what your hash-power is doing, it can be used to attack the network without your knowledge. Luke-JR invented the "Get block template" protocol to allow pools to disclose the block being worked on to the miner. Luke-JR is also the one who used his pool's resources to attack a nascent alt-coin.

There exists a distributed Pool called P2Pool. This takes a fairly beefy computer to run (At least 1Ghz, 2GB RAM). Most hashers make do with much less.

Edit: running a full node uses more bandwidth as well: mostly depending on how many connections you allow. My node with up to 64 connections and P2Pool (16 connections) (and namecoin) was using about 100GB/month.

Can anyone tell me of the advantages of running a Bitcoin full node?

Depends. Some think that running a full node on a home line is harming the network as you usually do not allow remote connections and you are not reliably online. This can be changed of course, configure your firewall accordingly and use an old machine as local server.

A full blown server (or actually cheap VPS with ~2 GB RAM is fine) with a dedicated IP will definitly help the network. Especially if you can get it to a stable state and do not have to restart it every other day.

Do I understand this correctly, that asic miner aren't full nodes but "lightweight" nodes.

Modern ASIC miners are no nodes at all, not even "lightweight" nodes. The light nodes would be wallet likes Multibit or most of the mobile clients. They need a full node to get information about blocks and transactions. A modern ASIC is designed to connect to a mining node that provides information, the ASIC does the hashing and returns information.

What does it mean? What functionality is lacking with asic miners?

From the top of my head: full copy of the blockchain, the ability to relay transactions.

Edit: I think of ASIC miners as an external calculation unit of a full node (the pool). This picture might be wrong though, but I am pretty sure it isnt.

Thank you guys for these thorough explanations, highly appreciated!
 

[redsn0w]

You should run a full node onnly for support the bitcoin network, you don't have any other advantage.

[CryptKeeper]

You should run a full node onnly for support the bitcoin network, you don't have any other advantage.

I'm confused, don't you receive the tx fees? 

[redsn0w]

You should run a full node onnly for support the bitcoin network, you don't have any other advantage.

I'm confused, don't you receive the tx fees? 

No only the mining pool received the TX fees , it is a PoW coin not a PoS coin .

[CryptKeeper]

You should run a full node onnly for support the bitcoin network, you don't have any other advantage.

I'm confused, don't you receive the tx fees? 

No only the mining pool received the TX fees , it is a PoW coin not a PoS coin .

I thought only lightweight nodes and asic miners need a central server or pool. Full nodes should connect directly to other nodes.

 

[CryptKeeper]

You should run a full node onnly for support the bitcoin network, you don't have any other advantage.

I'm confused, don't you receive the tx fees? 

No only the mining pool received the TX fees , it is a PoW coin not a PoS coin .

I thought only lightweight nodes and asic miners need a central server or pool. Full nodes should connect directly to other nodes.

 

OK, I've looked it up:
transaction fees of a transaction can only be collected by including it into a valid block. And to be able to include a transaction in a valid block you have to mine a valid block. If you would mine one block, you could collect the fees, but nowadays nobody does solo-mining I guess?

[CoinCidental]

You should run a full node onnly for support the bitcoin network, you don't have any other advantage.

I'm confused, don't you receive the tx fees? 

No only the mining pool received the TX fees , it is a PoW coin not a PoS coin .

I thought only lightweight nodes and asic miners need a central server or pool. Full nodes should connect directly to other nodes.

 

OK, I've looked it up:
transaction fees of a transaction can only be collected by including it into a valid block. And to be able to include a transaction in a valid block you have to mine a valid block. If you would mine one block, you could collect the fees, but nowadays nobody does solo-mining I guess?

it is worth running a full node to keep the network strong if you can leave your computer on 24/7 and connected to internet

plenty of people still mine at home but you need decent hardware to make it worthwhile and cheap electric ,a cpu or gpu mining  would be losing you money thesedays i would imagine unless your power is free

[Newar]

[...] but nowadays nobody does solo-mining I guess?

Of course they do. If you have enough equipment it is still possible. There are also solo mining pools by which the pool op takes care of the blockchain etc., but the hashing is not pooled together as on a regular pool. For example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=763510.0 and http://bitsolo.net/

[RocketSingh]

Can anyone tell me of the advantages of running a Bitcoin full node?

When someone is running Bitcoin Core in his machine, is not he running a full node as long as he is connected to the internet ?

[HarmonLi]

Well actually, it (only) makes the network more stable. You help distributing new transactions and keeping a copy of the latest blockchain available. You become a part of the whole Bitcoin ecosystem and thus help making it better!