Blockchains. Cryptocurrencies. These are two words that have become more and more commonly heard over the last few years. One is the cryptographic backbone that is responsible for the creation of the tour de force that is the other. But what empowers the blockchain technology itself? And what creates decentralization and consensus amongst the parties involved in the chain? The answer to this is full nodes. Mining has gone on to flourish over the years, while full nodes have lagged behind in terms of adoption, despite them being of equal if not greater importance.

The focus of nimbleNODE is predicated around full nodes. We are here to create a revolution, and to provide a reliable means of running a full node for any chain, across households all over the world with unparalleled ease.

Many people are understandably unclear about the concept of full nodes, what they are, and what benefits that running full nodes bring. We are here to shed light on these questions and provide you with all the knowledge you need on the topics!

Without further ado, let’s get started!

What are Full Nodes?

To start, a node is a device with software responsible for verifying consensus rules and relaying transactions (usually in the form of blocks) of a particular blockchain. Running a full node is the only way to interact with a blockchain in a trustless way. Full nodes are also secure and do not suffer from the same attacks that could occur with light wallets. Furthermore, having the entire blockchain downloaded is the most private way to store, send, and receive crypto funds.

Now, let us go back in time briefly to the origins of Bitcoin. In Bitcoin’s white paper, the term ‘node’ was synonymous with mining as we know it today. Below is an excerpt from Satoshi:

“The network is robust in its unstructured simplicity. Nodes work all at once with little coordination. They do not need to be identified, since messages are not routed to any particular place and only need to be delivered on a best effort basis. Nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone. They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them” (Nakamoto, 8).

Difficulty of finding the next block increased and eventually, a subset of full nodes, known as miners, began to form in order to provide a specialized and professionalized means of finding the hash to complete a block. This in turn spiraled into the rise of ASICs, pool mining, and stratum mining, causing full nodes to no longer be effective in finding blocks with just CPU power.

Note: As stated before, full nodes not being able to complete blocks only applies to certain chains similar to Bitcoin. For other chains (ex: Decred, XRP, EOS, TRX etc.), full nodes retain the full power of consensus.

Fast forward to today, and full nodes continue to be crucial for blockchain consensus. Full nodes validate transactions and blocks, and relay them to the other nodes. Unlike full nodes, miners specialize in finding the hash that completes the blocks with the new transactions relayed from other nodes. Since both parties are involved with validation, they participate in consensus, however it is the full nodes that enforce the consensus rules, in order to prevent any node, user, wallet, or miner from sending anything on the network that breaks the rules.

The main lure for mining is profitability, causing many to believe that running a full node is just volunteer work without benefits; this is untrue. We will go in more details about the benefits of running a full node in the next section. To start, as mentioned above, without nodes, there would suddenly be free-reign for miners who would begin re-organizing the chain in order to execute consensus changes, thus essentially marking the end of a network.

Benefits of Running a Full Node

This first question people typically ask once they understand the concept is, ‘Why in the world would I want to run this in the first place??’ Well, quite a few reasons actually (if you’re interested in crypto, that is). We will break each of them down in their own section, below.

Economic Strength and Security

Running a full node is the only way to ensure that consensus rules are being enforced. Full nodes serve as an anchor for consensus, whereas, lightweight nodes on the other hand, can be swayed depending on the majority of miners. For example, if the majority of miners collude to change block size, which is a consensus change, the lightweight nodes would follow and split the network. The new network would be unable to transact with the original network, which continues to run strongly as the full nodes remain up. If there are no full nodes on the network, then that means the network has no economic strength, making it easily attackable by miners. Thus, economic strength is of immense importance for both the network, as well as individuals who truly want ownership of their funds and to keep the network secure.

Privacy & Wallet Functionality

When you yourself are downloading a blockchain, you are ensuring that it is fully private in a completely trustless manner. You are in charge of consensus which makes sure that certain rules such as no double-spends, no coins not belonging to the owner being spent, and difficulty adjustments are followed. As mentioned before, light clients and SPV nodes rely on third-party servers, which at times result in leaks of information about addresses.

Reliability

Lightweight nodes can be tricked to accept faulty blocks and invalid transactions, as in the case of when double-spend attacks are executed on certain exchanges. Full nodes perform various checks and are able to prevent many attacks that affect light wallets. It is highly recommended that all businesses operating in crypto run a full node to receive maximum security and reliability.

Conclusion

So, if full nodes are that important and beneficial, why are there not enough in the ecosystem? Three factors immediately come up when this topic is brought to attention: the difficulty of node set-up, hard disk requirements, and lack of knowledge. The space needed to run a node for certain blockchains is often greater than 200GBs and the syncing process could take up to multiple months to complete. People are unaware about different types of nodes and that nodes can also be run in just 4GBs. There is also a lack of information across different chains as to why full nodes are important in the first place.

nimbleNODEs are here to change all of that. We will put all of our efforts into spreading education about full nodes, as well as integrating as many blockchains and communities as we can in order to empower every individual in crypto with the ability to easily get started with a full node. Not to mention that the nimble mobile app provides a sleek, portable interface to interact with your device. We’re not exaggerating in any way when we say that running a node with nimble is as easy as plug-and-play. It’s time to take the prospects of self-sovereignty into our own hands, and be apart of the future that this technology shall pave!

#LetsGetNimble

nimbleNODE, Inc.

nimbleNODEs are the most affordable, portable, customizable, and nimble way to run full nodes from anywhere in the world. Visit the nimbleNODE website to learn more. Stay-up-to date with the project news and announcements by following our social media and communication channels: Twitter, Medium, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn and Telegram. If you have any further questions or inquiries, feel free to reach out to us at nimble@nimblenode.io. Join the conversation today!