Topic: Incentivizing Bitcoin Nodes (Read 15188 times)

In a perfect world, we would have altruism and millions of nodes, but unfortunately until we find a way to financially compensate the resources needed to keep a node running, it will remain rather low in count, but lets not forget its not only how many nodes there are, but how widespread they are (which is why big blocks are bad).

Don't feed the trolls.

Why would bitcoin developers jump on creating there own version of what Satoshi Nakamoto sent me in the previous email, months after they original email was recieved, as indicated in the previous posts? Because there is something to what he wrote to me - I am convinced this gut is legit!. Its because the email address I have for Satoshi is legit. Why would anyone continue to use the same email address that has been hacked? So it is rediculous to expect that he is still using [email protected] because it was hacked along time ago and the domain was tranfered since his original publication. Most people change there email  every 5-7 years anyways. BITCOIN is not as decentralized as most people think; the Chinese are essentially controlling the entire bitcoin mining operation. Mandatory Peer-to-peer qualified node requirements could level the playing field. Also, looking for details in the writing style won't really prove much since its pretty likely that his original whitepaper was proofread and edited before it was published - emails, on the otherhand, are generally produced with less careful "attention to detail". Those early commenters who "trolled" his outline in the email that I previously posted, seem like they are "out of touch" now... Proof of Qualified Node or Proof of Bitcoin Node is all anyone is talking about now. This means there is soon going to be revolution in the way mining is handled.

In my opinion, the cryptocurrency that solves proper incentivizing of nodes in a proof of stake system will be the next big (huge?) thing in this community.

Soon you might be able to be paid for doing that 

Ima just gonna setup a Bitcoin node to run 24/7 for a few months, it's pretty cold around here so adding another heater in the room would is good. Leaving my PC on all day will definitely generate some extra heat for me

I suggest many people to do the same!

No. I wasn't aware of that aspect of Siacoin. I'll look into it, thanks.

I'm cross-posting to SPR.

Have you looked at the inner workings of how Siacoin proves that a host holds data that it claims?

Its something along the lines of asking for a random piece of data from what is stored and asking for a checksum of that random data thereby "proving" the hoster actually has what they say they do.

Mike Hearn said something along the lines of:

"Just build it"

GMaxwell said something along the lines of:

"What about the sybil problem?" and 'he'll watch how things progress.'

Gavin Andrseen said something along the lines of:

"    "

Creating a layer two solution using an altcoin solves a huge number of problems, in particular how to validate a full node is a full node and not an army of fake nodes just sitting there getting rewarded but not serving the network. But the downside of using an altcoin as a layer two solution until it can be pegged as a bitcoin sidechain is "it's an altcoin" - code for, I'd rather bitcoin dies than let an altcoin help.

I don't want to spread misinformation but I do believe that coins101 had some interactions with some Bitcoin devs in regards to this. Don't quote me though.

The truth is though, the Bitcoin devs don't really have to endorse this for it to work. The real issue is creating the cryptographic proof that there is one service node (a version of masternodes) to one real Bitcoin node so that positive contributors are being rewarded and not some people running fake nodes or what have you...

It will perhaps be challenging, however, once it's done the network will be more or less self sustaining.

Another proposal I've contributed a little bit to is to be published soon(next week I hope but lets' see). the idea is to make asymmetric scheme so miners store the full state and provide proofs of its transformation correctness, while fullnodes are just checking proofs without need in disk database and so random I/O operations so very efficiently. Fullnodes are getting the same security guarantees as now. The scheme isn't applicable to Bitcoin, as usually, as it is not possible to modify Bitcoin significantly.

I think that the best thing is to educate the young students about bitcoin

just e-mail that to the bitcoin developers or some more technical e-mail circle, although many intelligent people rread this thread, i think its just best if you give it directly to the experts.

Btw, this is the full whitepaper for anyone who cares to read:

http://spreadcoin.info/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Proof-of-Bitcoin-Node-DRAFTv1-1.pdf

your POA proposal is interesting, maybe because I can see some aspects of Spreadcoin in there, areas we are working on or have already tested.

I was one of the main authors of the whitepaper on that incentives model. AMA.

I have advocated for pegging spreadcoin to bitcoin using sidechains when the economics reach the right balance. It can then be a layer two approach similar to Lightning Network, but its purpose would be to generate revenues for Bitcoin full nodes.

Proof of Bitcoin Node is first required to solve the sybil problem when you try any incentives model. Otherwise you end up paying fake nodes and Bitcoin gets zero benefit from having the additional full nodes supporting growth of the network.

I am a member of the Spreadcoin community and can probably lend a hand in explaining what we're trying to do. I don't know that this is the best place to do it. However, there is definitely development going on. Feel free to check out / post in the forum here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1045373.4700

We currently have one very dedicated and highly principled developer working on it right now. However, more devs would definitely help because it is a large problem to solve.

Cheers!

Edit: This is a small summary upcoming development release in the dev's words:

Ok indeed donation is not a sustainable business model but it could be tried for a temporary solution.

I dont think i am the best person to suggest this, maybe get to some developers, program your idea and show to the community how good your idea is.

If you are going to rely on donations then that would be a failing solution right from the start. That is hardly a stable way of incentivizing the people who run the nodes. I made a post about the Spreadcoin idea right above yours. Please take time to read what they are trying to do and tell me what you think. Could that be a good resolution to the problem? Of course I am not suggesting we use that cryptocurrency. But what do you think of the idea in general?  

I just tried to have a full node running but i cannot leave my PC open all day. I think we need some dedicated hosts, 1 node per each host provider, and pay it with donations.

That should boost the node count a bit, could be a temporary solution.