No2x: Full Nodes

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

— Thomas Jefferson

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

— Woodrow Wilson.

How important is it that it’s easy to run your own full Bitcoin node? That there are many thousands or millions of Bitcoin nodes running in the world in the future? How important is it that, if you want to verify something yourself, instead of checking a few websites you run the code to verify yourself?

Are liberty and freedom preserved by institutions and corporate action or are they preserved by the collective will of individuals?

I find the argument that a couple dozen companies all auditing the blockchain will keep it just as secure from tampering and control as if we each individually audited it to be absurd.

Bitcoin exists for the purpose of providing financial control to the individual. That control is only needed when it goes against the interest of the state or big corporations. Why do web companies help censor the internet in China? Why does the banking system prohibit certain types of transactions (even ones that are legal)? No limited number of companies will ever be able to defend against pressure from the state. Nor is it likely to even be in their interest.

It is already cumbersome to run an individual node. Actions are measured in hours or days, and it’s only going to get worse as Bitcoin grows. For Bitcoin to succeed we must build a culture of individual responsibility. This doesn’t mean everyone has to run a full node or that you’re not using Bitcoin if you take advantage of a service or use some form of SPV. But it does mean that there must be plenty of people who do run full nodes, and most importantly there must not be a significant barrier to you doing so if that is what you choose.

It will be impossible to change the blockchain or the freedom of Bitcoin not just because a few companies have promised to protect them, but because countless individuals are enforcing them.

Does this mean the block size can’t ever be raised? No, of course not. It just means we should always err on the side of being conservative. Err on the side of preserving this fundamental property. This is the novel thing Bitcoin brings to the world. We shouldn’t lose it because a Bitcoin startup might have a chance to compete with PayPal.