Author: Mike Hearn 2014-04-07 12:34:03
Published on: 2014-04-07T12:34:03+00:00
The number of full nodes in the Bitcoin network does not matter as long as there are enough to satisfy demand. However, a high number of nodes has benefits including lower costs for each node and a psychological benefit of appearing bigger and more decentralized. It is difficult to measure capacity vs demand, so it is important to consider how hard it is to run a node. The drop in the number of nodes could be due to insufficient interest or it being too difficult to run on a cheap server. It is expected that fewer people will run full nodes on consumer wallets, but if running on a cheap server is too hard, it could be concerning. Some nodes are shut down during the night, so it is possible that Addy's graphs and the author's crawler will slowly align as people give up using Core as a consumer wallet.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T18:41:27.792653+00:00