Understanding Bitcoin Nodes: Full Nodes vs Miners

So I just joined this forum and stumbled upon a post by NotATether about the "Run A Bitcoin Node" challenge. I haven't tried it yet since I need to look into how others are doing it first... honestly, I’m kinda lost on the whole process.

Nodes are super critical with Bitcoin's security. A full node grabs transactions, verifies them, and keeps the whole blockchain updated. They also help prevent those nasty 51% attacks.

Exactly! And the miners? They verify transactions too and add them to the blockchain, mining new blocks and getting rewards for their work. So, both are essential but serve different purposes.

You can even run a full node on something like a Raspberry Pi 4, which is pretty cool. It's not just about security; it’s about decentralization.

But isn't it the miners' job to ensure security? If they control the hash rates and keep it decentralized, doesn't that stop the 51% attacks?

Yeah, but some miners don’t even verify transactions. They just focus on generating the hash. So it's not black and white.

Wait, miners aren’t nodes. They run full nodes to submit mined blocks, but that doesn’t make them "miner nodes" or anything.

What do you mean by that? If someone’s running a challenge, are those all full nodes?

Nah, most aren’t full nodes. 95% are pruned nodes. People go for them because who wants to deal with all that storage for a full node?

Right, full nodes need a ton of space. Like, almost 2 TB just to run one properly!

There are ways to run full nodes on mobile too, like through ABCore or UserLAnd, but they can heat up and need decent hardware.

Can we just skip over the Cointelegraph references? They're not reliable at all. And full nodes can’t prevent 51% attacks; all nodes should verify transactions.

So all full nodes do verification, right? They create their own chainstate and can verify any new transactions they receive. But where’s the proof for that 95%?

You sound a bit off. The OP’s not wrong. Many are running pruned nodes for that challenge. It’s a short-term thing, and most don't want to download the full blockchain.

Nodes are nodes, regardless of who runs them. From the network’s view, every full node validates. So it doesn’t matter where they’re from.

I have no clue what the actual percentage of pruned nodes is. I tried checking some sites, but the data seems off. Why does it look like there are more NODE_NETWORK than NODE_NETWORK_LIMITED?

Glad you asked. It’s key to ask the right questions. I messed up my understanding too. I found some good resources on mastering Bitcoin that cleared things up.

So, if I get this, miners use the same nodes as regular users but also have extra stuff to help create blocks?

Yes and yes! Mining pools typically run the full nodes and have additional tools to create block templates. Miners just connect to the pool for their work.

Totally agree. They run similar software but might have custom tweaks for more options. Like, ViaBTC has to reserve spots for transactions in their pool.