Topic: Total Number of full nodes operating. Less than 10k. (Read 1131 times)

I didn't cited anything, I'm talking about the core design principles, the basics.

Basically,the network security is a direct result of impracticality of collusion between participants because of their divergence in terms of interests, and topological distribution. It is not up to Satoshi Nakamoto and his whitepaper to decide about it: less participants, more collusion potentials and the Byzantine generals would possibly commit a treason.

If Satoshi Nakamoto, hypothetically had suggested any other security model for bitcoin, it would never become popular and considered secure. Bitcoin security model is based on decentralization which is guaranteed by collusion resistance which in turn is not achievable in a network with few participants.

What? It is so opportunistic 
Just because Satoshi has said something wrong in favor of you, it is citable in the context of a discussion about the most essential features of bitcoin?

Which altcoin did what design change "along the lines' of my proposal?

As of my knowledge, PoW has always been vulnerable to pooling pressure no matter which coin, it has always been based on winner_takes_all approach which I have thoroughly proved its variance drawbacks and inevitability of pooling pressure due to it. I am not aware of any altcoin implementing any alternative variant like what I have proposed.

Greg, you are a prominent figure in the community, kinda political figure I suppose, and should be more careful about what you say imo.

It is not what we are used to hear, confirming the existence of a "problem" by a lead developer (and what problem? Centralization of mining!) and denouncing any responsibility or even possibility for confronting it or claiming that it is not "the origin" of every problem!

It is the origin of the problem under discussion in this topic, isn't it?

It was the origin of delaying SW for an age. Wasn't it?

It is the main factor behind the slow down in adoption of bitcoin by masses and the price being driven by speculative gamblers rather than decent business use cases. Isn't it?

What other problem do you mean Greg that is so independently important?

on this point you can, in particular the white paper pointed out that nodes should be run for independent security (last sentence of section and that mining would be done by specialized hardware...  moreover, there have been a number of altcoins to make radical design changes along the lines of what aliashraf has been promoting and yet they do not see an increase in nodes.

Mining centralization is certainly a problem, but that doesn't make it the origin of every problem nor does it mean that any particular proposed solution would improve it or anything else for that matter.

No it won't. If it did it wouldn't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting significant usage. It lets pooling for payments be operated separately from the consensus -- which does mean that you could still pool payments in a fairly traditional way while running off your own node, but it doesn't require you run your own (nor could it really).  After talking to multiple large miners (tens of MW of mining) who have _never_ run a Bitcoin wallet (they just have their pools pay directly to an exchange account) I think the potential of this is easily overstated, but it's just the right (better even) thing to do.  Combined with other efforts to lower node operational costs we might see some more independence there but I wouldn't hold my breath for a rapid change.

But specialization always develops in any "industry". We cannot always make citations on the white paper because Bitcoin has already developed further beyond "Satoshi's vision".


Matt Corallo is developing Better Hash. It will make miners run their own nodes, and bring some node decentralization back among miners, https://github.com/TheBlueMatt/bips/blob/betterhash/bip-XXXX.mediawiki

Pruned node is still a full node but there is still a slight problem.


Ethereum currently suffers from the too big blockchain size. Archive nodes store more than 1 TB of data which is way too much for an ordinary user. No wonder why so many users use pruned nodes.

What about pruning the blockchain?
It's already 200gb now, in a few years it's going to be 500, even 1Tb.

I would like to know your thoughts about it.

Is it so bad to use a pruned blockchain?

The point of running a full node is nullified if you aren't the one running it. Unless the machine running the node is under your control, you have to trust a third party. Running a full node is all about getting rid of trust.

Greg Maxwell,

I'm not angry about anything and nobody has considered my technical arguments wrong or confused, you can just check.

This topic is about the total number of full nodes being lower than expectation and I'm suggesting that the only real incentive behind running a full node (besides keeping track of large balances/transactions) is mining related and the situation with pools has removed this incentive. How in the hell it would be considered off-topic?

I implicitly criticized the whole community for being distracted by block size and SW debate and preparation for LN instead of taking care of pools and ASICs and their centralization consequences. It was not my fault that some shills overreacted to my criticism and turned the topic to a "whose fault was this?"  debate with ridiculous arguments like nobody is responsible for anything!

Now, please instead of accusing me of going off topic, make it clear for us: Do you agree that we need far more decentralization in mining to have more full nodes and better security?

Aliashraf,

We all understand that you are angry that other people don't want to spend their time radically redesigning Bitcoin in accordance with the "fixes" you demand which others have responded to and concluded your technical arguments are wrong and confused. We all also understand that you disagree with these analysis.

In this thread posts about these complaints are offtopic, they have little to do with the subject of the thread beyond some broad conjecture that you make that if there were less cause for pooling there would be a lot more nodes, a weak argument but one that could be made without all the vitriol. You're turning the thread into a series of abuses that will discourage productive on-topic discussion. Cut it out.

It is ridiculous:
When it is about ownership lot of people speak loudly and treat bitcoin like their property and when they are blamed for their mistakes, shills come here screaming about bitcoin being open source and nobody being responsible.

Just stop bullshitting and let the people who feel responsible about the last few years of bitcoin development path beware of their mistakes and try to do their job better. Nothing is over, with good faith and enough commitment bitcoin has infinite possibilities for overcoming centralization threats.

Shills are not helpful, we need responsible leaders and developers focused on keeping the coin decentralized.

I think we're not capable enough to "teach" the devs that how their work should be done.


Hey, let's forget about "blaming anybody" or the ^distraction^ issue, I've got a plan for you here - when you know that you can get the complete source code of Bitcoin at GitHub, why don't you come up with a whole new concept where everything will be based on your "plan" and nobody would be there to blame for?