Nodes

What Nodes Do

When you want to send some Bitcoin, your transaction first goes to the nodes that confirm you actually have that Bitcoin to send by checking the entire transaction history of Bitcoin. This ensures that money isn’t printed out of thin air (we all know how it goes when that happens but we digress)!

Once confirmed, this transaction then goes in to batch or “block” of other confirmed transactions where miners then process them. After this block of transactions is processed by miners, it then gets validated by the nodes to ensure it follows the rules of Bitcoin’s protocol and is added to the transaction history (blockchain).

There are several types of node implementations you can run depending on the features you want to use on the bitcoin network or any of its second layer solutions.

Supporting The Bitcoin Network

So as you can see, nodes play a vital role in supporting the Bitcoin network as they validate the entire transaction history. They actually ensure that the miners, users and even other nodes are playing by the rules, which ensures the security and decentralisation of the network. You’ll often hear miners running their own nodes too to make sure they aren’t getting cheated out of earning their Bitcoin for processing transactions.

The good news is that nodes are computer programs which are readily accessible and can run on your normal PC (if you have enough space and processing power). It also means you don’t have to manually process these transactions yourself!

Nodes are cheaper and easier to run than mining equipment but unlike miners, nodes don’t earn anything for validating transactions. However, at TBM, we believe it is in everyone’s interest to at least consider running a node to support this new open monetary network and allow you direct access to audit the blockchain.

If you’re not technically minded, nodes can be spun up a lot easier than you might think and you can even buy them out-the-box. You can explore the different options to set up your own nodes below.