Running Bitcoin @ WU
Co-Authors: Jan Valendin & Jakob Hackel
To commemorate the 10-year history of Bitcoin, a few researchers at the Cryptoeconomics Research Lab launched a Bitcoin validation node, the first one hosted at the Vienna University of Economics & Business. The node stores the entire history of the Bitcoin network, and validates new transactions, as they are being added to the Bitcoin blockchain. This is a complementary function to Bitcoin mining, during which the miners compete for the right to create new blocks and add transactions to the blockchain. While Bitcoin mining is done almost exclusively on special purpose industrial grade hardware these days, a validation node is lightweight and simple to run on a regular home PC. Anyone running such a node can send and receive Bitcoin, and verify the integrity of the transactions, without having to rely on any third party. It is estimated that there are currently over 10,000 public validation nodes worldwide, running the most common Bitcoin implementation, Bitcoin Core.
We are reminded of the early days of the Internet, and the important role that universities played in the establishment of shared internet protocols, but also indirectly building the internet infrastructure. As a public university, we feel it is our responsibility to support open source, censorship-resistant, borderless innovation, and to fulfill this duty we chose to participate in the Bitcoin network.
As we are ramping up the activities of the Cryptoeconomics Research Lab, we plan to participate in other decentralized public networks, details of which will be announced soon. Our hope is that more universities and other public institutions will join and support the robustness of Bitcoin and other networks, by running parts of their infrastructure.
About the Author
Shermin Voshmgir is the Author of the Book “Token Economy“. She is the director of the Research Institute for Cryptoconomics at the Vienna University of Economics, and the founder of BlockchainHub Berlin. In the past, she was a curator of TheDAO, and advisor to various startups like Jolocom, Wunder and the Estonian E-residency program. In addition to her studies at the Vienna University of Economics, she studied film and drama in Madrid. Her past work experience ranges from Internet startups, research & art. She is Austrian, with Iranian roots, and lives between Vienna and Berlin.
