From: Isidor Zeuner <cryptocurrencies@quidecco.de>
To: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net>
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Message-Id: <20140520183815.2A186DF7279@quidecco.de>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 20:38:15 +0200 (CEST)
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Why are we bleeding nodes?
Precedence: list

> >
> > In my opinion, the number of full nodes doesn't matter (as long as
> > it's enough to satisfy demand by other nodes).
> >
>
> Correct. Still, a high number of nodes has a few other benefits:
>
> 1) The more nodes there are, the cheaper it should be to run each one,
> given that the bandwidth and CPU for serving the chain will be spread over
> more people.
>
> 2) It makes Bitcoin *seem* bigger, more robust and more decentralised,
> because there are more people uniting to run it. So there's a psychological
> benefit.
>

Psychological benefit vs. effective benefit involves the danger of
destroying trust in the Bitcoin network when there are hard facts for
non-robustness while the node number looks big. Therefore, it may make
sense to establish better metrics.

> Also, we don't have a good way to measure capacity vs demand at the moment.
> Whether we have enough capacity is rather a shot in the dark right now.
>
>
> > What matters is how hard it is to run one.
> >
>
> Which is why I'm interested to learn the reason behind the drop. Is it
> insufficient interest, or is running a node too painful?
>
> For this purpose I'd like to exclude people running Bitcoin Core on laptops
> or non-dedicated desktops. I don't think full nodes will ever make sense
> for consumer wallets again, and I see the bleeding off of those people as
> natural and expected (as Satoshi did). But if someone feels it's too hard
> to run on a cheap server then that'd concern me.
>

In my opinion, the characteristic of being able to make use of
non-dedicated nodes should be regarded as an advantage of the Bitcoin
protocol, and not something to get rid of. Nodes being able to
contribute this way may lead to even more robustness than
decentralization alone, as they can do so without exposing a fixed
address which could be attacked.

Best regards,

Isidor