Scaling bitcoin remains a rather troublesome matter these days. In order to make headway in this department, it is important more nodes becoming decentralized. Using a cheap hosting provider plan to run a full node is not in anybody’s best interests by any means. It appears some people are running a full node on an older computer these days, which is a positive development.
Running A Node Requires Some Effort
As we have seen in the past with projects such as Bitcoin Classic, running full network nodes on cheap hosting solutions creates a big problem. Centralizing bitcoin nodes is not in the best interest of the network, even though it is a somewhat convenient solution. A more recent issue with this way of hosting network nodes was illustrated by Dash, as several hundred master nodes were knocked offline due to a minor DDoS attack disabling cheaper nodes.
While some people may argue a large amount of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited nodes are hosted on “proper” VPS plans, it is evident something will need to change sooner or later. Running a full node on a regular computer takes a few hours to set up, as downloading the blockchain is a tedious process, even despite the recent changes made to the Bitcoin Core client. However, it does not require a fast or modern computer to do so. In fact, one can even use a cheaper device, such as the Raspberry Pi 3, for this type of purpose.
Even though adding more nodes to the network does nothing to help SegWit or Bitcoin Unlimited activate now would be a good time to host a node regardless. Showing support for whichever solution one believes is the right one is valuable information. There is always a need for more network nodes to relay transactions and network information round the clock. One possible downside is how running a full node will use up a lot of bandwidth, though.
Moreover, if the situation evolves in such a way it comes to determining the user-activated soft fork, every full node will have an important decision to make. In fact, it will be the full nodes on the network who get to vote on activating that particular soft fork or not. Anyone who thinks that is the right approach to scaling bitcoin should consider spinning up a node sooner rather than later, that much is certain.
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