there's been a lot of talk about mining
equipments and the overall Pico hash how
much does it stand for it's at around
3500 Pico harsh right now but there is
no talk about how many nodes are there
and what technology they are using can
you please explain a little bit about
the role that nodes play in the protocol
and everything that's a great question
thank you so much so we've discussed
mining and a lot of people focus on
binding it's actually a problem that
people focus on binding because mining
is an enabling technology in Bitcoin but
it is by no means the only technology in
Bitcoin it is not even the most
interesting technology in Bitcoin it's
part of a constellation of technologies
that work together I asked this question
of audiences often I assume you all use
the Internet yes you have used the I'm
not talking about Facebook I'm talking
about the Internet all right who here
has a working understanding of the
purpose mechanics and applications of
the border gateway protocol BGP one two
three I'm counting myself
excellent did you have any idea that
without that the internet doesn't work
did you have any idea that in fact that
protocol bgp is responsible for getting
your packets from here to there
everywhere in the world it is the most
essential technology underlying the
world's routing system and you use BGP
every single day it's just that you
didn't know you were using it right it's
almost like turning on your water and
being oblivious to the process of
filtration and chlorination that ensures
that you don't get typhoid from it and
that is the same with BGP and it's the
same with mining mining is a technology
that miners need to know about there's
like BGP is a technology that service
providers and routing experts need to
know about that the average user does
not
on the other hand nodes are important
nodes are like servers on the intranet
but they have an even more important
role so what is a node a node is simply
a computer that is participating in the
global Bitcoin network by speaking a
protocol that for further confusion is
called Bitcoin the protocol the Bitcoin
peer-to-peer network protocol to be more
specific is a protocol that allows these
nodes on the network to communicate with
each other and what they do is they
propagate transactions and blogs
everywhere you can run one of these in
fact you should there are about 10,000
nodes that we know of that advertise
their presence by listening on specific
ports in a way that can be discovered
there's probably five or six times as
many that do not advertise their
services that listen or do not listen on
open ports or even that are hidden
behind various protocols like tor and
things like that and listen on hidden
ports in general the know instead of
participating in Bitcoin served the most
important purpose every one of them acts
as an authoritative verifier of every
single transaction and blog that type of
node is called more precisely a full
node or even more precisely a fully
validating node right a fully validating
node may also keep a full copy of the
blockchain the entire ledger on its hard
drive it doesn't have to it can be a
fully validating nodes with a reduced
copy of the blockchain it communicates
by random process of connection with a
set of peers that it chooses from the
network and it doesn't trust
Speirs it monitors these peers and every
time it receives a transaction or a
block from them the other peer says
here's a transaction that is happening
on the Bitcoin network and your node
goes so you say let's see
and takes it and independently verifies
every aspect of that transaction it Thor
attentively reconciles it with its own
copy of the ledger to determine whether
the funds have been double spent and if
you send that node a transaction that is
incorrect it will not only reject the
transaction it will stop talking to you
so go no you lied not talking to you for
24 hours and I go stand in the corner I
know the tries to propagate incorrect
information is very quickly isolated
because all of the nodes that it
attempts to communicate with will ban it
and disconnect from it there are levels
of offense there are some things that
are so egregious that they'll get you
permanently bad and there are some
things that will only get you dropped
for an hour or so and it varies but the
important thing is the nodes don't trust
each other they are thora tative ly and
fully validate every transaction why
would you run one of these things
because you want to be in control of
your money because the whole purpose of
Bitcoin is that you don't trust anyone
else to tell you what the truth is you
trust only in the execution of the
consensus rules and the independent
verification that they do I run a fully
validating node in fact I run several of
them and I first check them every
service provider every exchange every
wallet company every company that
interacts with Bitcoin every individual
that wants this same level of authority
and autonomy runs a fully validating
node nodes decide what the rules
are not miners miners get the
transactions that nodes decided were
valid and they give back blocks at the
pleasure of the nodes that will decide
if they are worthy of being propagated
because they are valid the validity of
the consensus rules is not determined by
miners they sequence transactions into a
block the validity of the consensus
rules is determined by nodes because
they will not propagate lies that's the
importance of a node if you can run 120
gig of disk space a couple of gigs of
monthly bandwidth four gigs of ram dual
or four core CPU plug it into your DSL
turn it on be part of the revolution and
money and more importantly at that point
in time you no longer need to ask anyone
did a transaction happen is it confirmed
is it valid you now have an
authoritative record of your own that
answers that question without appeal to
any authority that is really running
Bitcoin so thank you for asking that
question that was a great question
[Music]
you