Profit for the nodes with a copy of the blockchain

TECHNOLOGY
#1

I wonder for which reason the nodes secure the network. As far as I am concerned they are the only members of the network who guard it and by that secure it. But they aren’t rewarded. They also have to spent power and furthermore have the hardware costs.

Is it just the ideology or believe in the projects drives them? Or is there any sort of reward to ensure that the network will permanently have enough guards? Or do they just want to be aware that the network which they use works as intended. Furthermore, have all information’s saved?

#2

There are many reasons to run a full node, and as such have a full copy of the blockchain.

Business in the bitcoin space, such as wallets(many run light nodes), block explorers, exchanges, market places etc. generally runa full node so that they will have access to the transaction information without having to rely in a full node you don’t control. They also get a marginal benefit since adding nodes to the network improves the network.

Miners (or mining pools to be more accurate) also run full nodes since that is necessary to participate in the consensus algorithm.

You also have the regular guys that run it for idelogical reasons, and also, as you mentioned, to see exactly what are the rules the network is following for themselves, without having to trust what other people say the rules are.

So the main reason is to have more precision in the knowledge you have of the network, without trusting anybody else.

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#3

Once a node downloads a blockchain, querying the data seems slower than other database structures (ex. SQL, NoSQL) because blockchain uses a singly-linked list. How can nodes and services more quickly query and work with blockchain data? How do block explorers work with blockchain data – do they index blockchain data into a different data type?

@filip Wondering if you, in particular, could shed light on this. Thanks in advance!

#4

Good question! I’m not 100% sure how they do it but I would assume they have a normal sql like database locally which they sync to the blockchain and which they index. That way they can index it however they like.

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