Bitcoin Q&A: Why Running a Node is Important

[@PixelPhobiac]

Proud super full node runner since '13!

[@ricp]

hey, what beginner resources would you recommend to get me started on running my own node? (setup, config, hardware, etc) - Thanks

[@theshogun4660]

Andreas, you're a superstar! Thank you for your continued support and advocacy for an open and decentralized financial system for everyone. Cheers 🍻

[@onisazo]

facepalm

[@bitsinmyblood]

Old laptop + 1TB HDD = simple node

[@Akhil-gd7lp]

What a timing! Was just researching about nodes and the legend comes up with a video on it.

[@iijokerzace]

Word of warning : Nodes use up a lot of Bandwidth (even at 1 Mb). Just running it 6-10 hours a day is okay if you have limited data. It could eat up a lot of GB over the course of the month.

[@aantonop]

You can configure the node software to limit the bandwidth or the disk or both

[@iijokerzace]

aantonop thanks for the reply Andreas. I did not know this and appreciate everything you do to help us all understand this revilutuonary technology! I hope to see you this April in the Bay Area

[@polomadmo]

I was hoping you could answer my very crucial question on this matter? Where is the benefit or compensation for the Full Nodes that are not Miners who store the Blockchain currently 360GB and increasing as well as secure it? And What will happen when it is no longer feasible for the Bitcoin nodes who do it out of love for Bitcoin, and can no longer afford to do it due to size of the Blockchain or cost? To me what will happen is the number of full-nodes starts to decrease rapidly as there is no benefit to being a node?

[@Sshadoww_m]

Thank you Andreas, learning a lot from you. Node is finally up and running after 4 days syncing.

[@CraigMullins1]

Any way to make money running a node? What's daily bandwidth of running a node after you have blockchain downloaded? What size hard drive do you need? Any cheap hard drive fine?

[@tezmccarthy]

Great info Andreas. Started running a fulll node last year, hoping to upgrade and get Lightening running soon

[@Filipe8019]

I understand that it's "safer" or more reliable to run your own node if you want to check your own transactions but....... if something does go wrong, what could we do anyway?

[@dkcb7]

I am kind of surpised there are not that many in my country. I will get one

[@BlaBlaBla87702]

Hey Andreas, since you are the guru on this subject, do you think the ISP will be able to develop a bandwidth shaping technology (as they have done with the internet) to control the speed of the bitcoins LN transactions on the TCP layer of the Bitcoin Network ???

[@Silverboarding]

this information its priceless and is cheap for everyone, pay attention if you want to learn more of Bitcoin

[@iijokerzace]

Andreas how much consensus do nodes have over miners? Do miners have any say in consensus or are they there only for a bitcoin reward and processing transactions?

[@robdcbtcinvestanduse5003]

My understanding is that miners are separate nodes than consensus nodes so they have no say in consensus

[@robdcbtcinvestanduse5003]

He’s starting a node livestream in 30 min(1pm 2/7/21

[@johnbostick9176]

QUESTION: If you have little tech skill, i.e. don't use command prompt to solve issues, how do you set up a Bitcoin Node? I have the hardware (a computer with plenty of disk space) and downloaded the Bitcoin block chain but could not get the node to work, I think the problem was getting my home machine to be a static ip. At least I think that was the issue. I am pretty sure it had to do with my internet connection not talking back to the block chain. I spent a lot of time on the Bitcoin Core website looking at posts and I am pretty sure it is the internet ip that is the problem. I could not find any solution simple enough for my tech neophyte brain to handle. I know that nodes are critical to the infrastructure of Bitcoin and other crypto and if you want to be more than a sideline investor and you are a true believer, which I am, you want to help and be a part of the infrastructure. The problem is it seems there is no "black box" solution I can buy on Amazon that will set up a node and solve any connection issues. I am surprised this has not been built. If it has please tell us about it. If not please help. :) If we could get a Bitcoin Node set up the next goal would be a Lightning Node.

[@Joe99]

Did you enable port forwarding on port 8333 in your router to point to your machine?

[@Supremoohh]

Thanks for all Andreas!!

[@mariolitano4130]

It sounds like for my e-commerce business to be able to accept payments 24/7 on LN I need to basically pay and run my own server or subscribe to some kind of cloud service like azure to run my node 24/7 uninterrupted? I don't think running a raspberry pi on my home network is going to cut if I want to have Enterprise level payment processing. I don't want to miss payments.

[@mariolitano4130]

Yes perhaps

[@aantonop]

yes, for a small business that wants reliable payments and doesn't want to run servers, it will make more sense to use an intermediary service provider. It's not ideal, but it's better than credit cards

[@bady69uk]

Thank you Andreas always an education watching your videos

[@cybersasho]

True

[@davearthur8656]

Great tech breakdown for us newbies......greatly appreciate your work. I am looking forward to discover your website for your merch and mugs n books etc

[@rohittrivedi89]

How we can monitor if node is running fine on my server in background? How can I check node health like is it throwing intermittent errors as such?..thanks..

[@gorovitz]

How could anyone run a node if almost everyone are behind the NAT?

[@davearthur8656]

Thanks heaps . Very helpful and informative indeed.

[@crazylove565]

Andreas, I wish you could do a show on how to set up your own full wallet node for personal use.

[@bigbullhorn8443]

When the GOAT speaks you listen!!!!!!!.

[@cybersasho]

This guy is my hero!!

[@martinusasp8927]

You are amazing

[@heinodersanger9809]

Are you willing to discuss this topic with Craigh Wright publicly? I would be interested to see a discussion between both sides.

[@ishine330]

I dont agree, AA claims about decentralisation in this video were not validated by reason. This topic needs to be debated properly by educated debaters. Craig is a perfect antagonist

[@yevgenydevine]

Craig will eat Andreas alive on this subject on any day. If that debate happens, Andreas loses BTC the majority of thinking users, there is no way on earth he wins that debate or even makes any sense in it.

[@FredoCorleone]

what about all the old hardware which become useless for mining overtime?

[@11ITK]

I'm sorry but how in the world does Andreas Antonopolous' KZbin channel only have 135k subscribers.

[@sandeepvk]

Hello - SHould I learn python or JS to enter into block chain domain ?

[@KeyvanDavani]

Hey, Andreas, thank you for all your ethical and educational work. Hope to meet and interview you in Vienna in April 2020.

[@dwk8081]

Do you get paid for running nodes?

[@johnalmighty]

No transaction would be complete until BTC reaches my wallet, I don’t care the nature of the sale. I never cared for the Blockchain confirmations, simply because I set solid and firm rules before doing business for my services.

[@bricedurand]

Very interesting, not sure that companies will host nodes with their own hardware though. Also the audio quality could be better, it sounds like sound is captured from your laptop's microphone and not from the on your shirt. Or maybe you're in a small room with no furniture?

[@ZAHID543]

Can anyone explain do 2 and 3 node can have the same transaction in the same block.?

[@SAL-fs1mr]

All nodes following the same blockchain will have the same transactions in each block.

[@iblackfeathers]

start of video probably triggers amazon alexa :)

[@AntranikDotOrg]

Probably no one is ever gonna name their kids Alexa now, hah

[@bengweeks]

* Confirmed

[@erikvalorian8496]

Ok i just stepped out of my bitcoin comfort zone. This is a little much.

[@willi1147]

I recognize your voice from Let's Talk Bitcoin on SoundCloud!

[@WayneModz]

I gotta download and verify 220gb to be a node 😪

[@CraigMullins1]

How do w set up the node properly and securely?

[@cableguyzne]

Craig Mullins Off Chain with Jimmy Song has a specific video on setting up a full node. Pretty easy as I’ve got one running too.

[@cryptoschizo9474]

As usual, great video. Would you be able to cover GDPR and how it could affect blockchain technologies that hold customer information? It's just around the corner and I'm wondering if anyone in the blockchain / crypto space has considered it. Apologies if you've already done a discussion about this.

[@StellarStoic]

Nothing has changed :)

[@knpstrr]

I'm a total noob, but this makes it sound like corruption is possible by miner consolidation

[@stock7628]

Nodes have power over the miners the miners don't have power over the nodes. Miners get the transactions that nodes decided were valid. The validity of consensus rules is determined by the nodes not the miners. The miners sequence transactions into a block. Nodes will not propagate lies.

[@johnbostick9176]

Anybody have a good video for setting up a node for the non-tech folks? I see a lot of comments here, including my own, where people are asking how to set up a node. For me to use it, it would have to be pretty idiot proof. :) I had to Google what a raspberry pi was.

[@rolandsharp]

why connect with a satellite dish?

[@AlexandreBarbosaIT]

So, can we assume Bitcoin is centralized already by the ASIC manufacturer?

[@moussaself7703]

ANDREA ANTONOPOLOS IS THE FINEST WISEST AND MOST BRILLIANT MAN. HE IS A MAJOR INFLUENCE IN THE THINKING AND GROWTH OF MILLIONS OF MINDS. HIS INFLUENCE WILL BE INFINITE IN THE GENERATIONS TO COME WE ARE LEARNING WITH WITH MORE THAN 4 YEARS STUDY IN UNIVERSITY .

[@cybersasho]

Stuff he said years ago, for example about there going to be thousands of alt coins(, like children's currency as an example,) are sinking in nowadays.. Andreas is awesome and a true visionaire!

How will all lightning payment remain cheap? If many node will be required (hopefully) to operate the network it means your transaction might need to make through a few of them to get on chain. And so every hop on the network would mean some transaction fee (can't think of any other way). How will that part remain low in cost, or will that be the same path we made with the base bitcoin chain: cheap in the early days and when it starts to get attention everything skyrockets?

Miners still have to get from the fees but that will be split between the transactions in each block. It's the question of the nodes, even if there is a lot how can we keep those fees low? I would expect a continuous rise, just as we could see with miners.

[@ashvecchio]

LN is already looking to upsell! Not cool.

[@quelorepario]

The model of incentives has failed it's purpose. Now it is just hubris that keeps it alive.

[@bisiriyutajudeen5728]

Says who? You, another wise man on the web.

[@MarcinGrobelkiewicz]

when u encrypt amozon is it not so good as almost yours

[@nykowow]

It is obviously not possible to run a full node on a mobile wallet. Hopefully this will be fixed

[@JM-or3od]

You wouldn't be able to store the blockchain on a phone anyway, no?

[@nykowow]

Exactly, and I wish I could

[@iijokerzace]

It fills up too quickly. You might eventually get light weight nodes in the phone that uses a slightly less secure version of the full node since it only requires to store the last block and the current one being made (ex. Block A gets confirmed, block B comes next. Block B gets confirmed and block A is erased and block B is kept. When block C is made, block B is erased and block C is kept and so on. The idea is that we know block B could not exist without the existence of block A and block C could not exist without the existence of block B. It's like when you see footprints on the beach but no one around. You know someone has been there even though you see nobody.)

[@JonathanCr0ss]

This is incorrect, for a while now it has been possible to run a *pruned* node on an Android phone. I have seen it more than a year ago. This provides all the security of a full node, but you just don't keep all the blocks. But it is not easy or particularly efficient. A better idea is to run a full node on a server 24/7 and then use a light client that connects to your full node when needed. Here are instructions for setting that up: github.com/jonathancross/jc-docs/blob/master/Bitcoin_mobile_privacy.md

[@Kabab]

Alexa asks questions? 😂

[@Kabab]

She's become sentient! Run!

[@honestmicky]

Andreas you are TBE....

[@cybersasho]

I want 2 marry Andreas.. And I'm not even gay!

[@ZacheryGlass]

Get a better mic. Audiotechnica is $100

[@aantonop]

I have a good mic. It was a user error (mine)

[@ZacheryGlass]

aantonop Okay, Keep up the great work!