Probably stupid question - if I mine Digibyte (with USB miner on Raspberry Pi) then I am a node too? How much difference does one node make at this stage?
If you are mining through a mining pool, then no you aren't a node.
You are a node if you have the full wallet open and connected on your computer.
If you were solo mining through the full wallet, then you would be a node, but few people do this.
Thanks for the answer.
So I could mine through mining pool on that Raspberry and also have wallet open on that same Raspberry all the time to contribute to the network, right? But how important for network is one node at this stage?
A cryptocurrency uses nodes to transmit messages, it's part of the process of creating/verifying transactions. The way I understand it, the messages are sent to random nodes each time. So with more nodes on the network, these transaction messages are not being sent to the same nodes over and over. The more nodes there are on a network the more secure it is.
Unfortunately, there isn't any incentive to keeping the full (core) wallet open on your computer all the time. In fact, it's a bit of a security risk to your wallet if someone gains access to your computer. But, it does make the network better. A good solution would be to add an empty core wallet that you never use to your computer and leave that running. Keep your personal wallet on another computer.
It's up to each person to decide if they feel it's helping or not. In reality, one wallet isn't going to make a difference, but if everyone thought that way and turned theirs off, then it could limit the effectiveness of the network.
