There is a new all time high in number of Bitcoin nodes running

bitnodes.io

5 points·janandonly··10 comments

Wow, so many hidden nodes. A majority in fact. I wonder if it's due to Chinese mining?

Looks like the hash rate grew similarly since July last year: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate

The "Unknown" category is the largest one, but fortunately it doesn't have majority yet. If it does gain majority, a single actor might control the mining (but hopefully clients warn of this).

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/pools

Obligatory reminder that most of these nodes don't do anything. They don't produce blocks and they have no economic weight.

Are they old miners that don't have the calculating power?

Miners and nodes are separate; most nodes are wallets or archives that aren't attempting to mine.

New info. for me. Thx!

They verify transactions and are important to the network

Not really and no.

I thought every node accepts or rejects blocks. Doesnt add to the computational mining difficulty but doesnt it add its 2 cents to the consensus of which chain is longest/best?

That's a common myth. If your non-mining non-economic node rejects a block... nothing happens. You have zero authority. Even if all the loser nodes worked together nothing would happen.

OK but what if my non-mining non-economic node accepts a block? Doesn't that add a vote for that block? As opposed to a block rejection isn't a no vote; it's nothing.

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