Why we run a Bitcoin node

History is written by the victor.

There is very little we can know about our history. We can have written literature and physical evidence, yet it is rarely possible to know the facts of something without having been there at the time. Even in the court of law, testimonies can be falsified, evidence can be misinterpreted, and stories can be spun to provide an alternative account of events.

In a world where history is shaped by perspective and bias, it might seem impossible to ever construct an account of events that is entirely free from distortion; not without a central arbiter who is entrusted to preserve the truth. We often rely on records of agreements to help settle disputes; however, as the degree of risk increases - such as when purchasing a house, for example - we need to involve licensed third parties who can be trusted to keep and preserve a historical record of our agreements, ensuring that penalties can be enforced if either party breaks the terms therein.

Of course, these agreements are often still vague enough to allow for re-interpretation, and, with enough corruption, nothing prevents the very institutions that were supposed to protect the sanctity of the agreement from altering the records. Fortunately, the system has worked well and has served its purpose truthfully most of the time.

Relating back to Bitcoin

Bitcoin is able to do something remarkable: it can create a historical record of events that cannot be altered or revised in any way. However, it does not solve the problem of people and institutions re-interpreting records or choosing not to apply enforcement; this technology cannot be used to replace any and everything, it has a very specific use case. Bitcoin is designed to capture transaction records and enforce the criteria that they must meet before accepting them. They enforce that they do not inflate the supply of bitcoin units, and that they have included all of the necessary information required to be fully verifiable.

As well as enforcing transaction rules strictly, Bitcoin uses a process to fossilise these records into history through two core technical innovations: "proof of work" and "difficulty adjustment". Proof of work introduces the cost of energy, while difficulty adjustment enforces the cost of time. Together, Bitcoin effectively uses time and energy to ensure that history can never be rewritten.

To break it down a bit more, people can still create alternative chains of events, but each candidate must include the relevant time and energy data to make comparisons possible. Additionally, the "proof of work" technology ensures that the energy data is impossible to fabricate. The chain that has clearly spent the most time and energy will stand out immediately, meaning the chain produced by the largest global community will always emerge as the victor, without the need for inconclusive debates or corruptible authority figures to make the call.

The magic lies in how data produced by Bitcoin is fully self verifiable. It is not just the transaction data that can be verified, it is the complete historical order of events that were observed and fossilised in real-time through a fair and neutral, yet irreversible process.

Why we run Bitcoin nodes

Bitcoin does not run by itself. Beyond needing users to create and submit transactions, it also requires people to provide energy for its proof of work, and it requires people to participate by collecting, verifying, and storing the information in as many places as possible, all around the world.

If Bitcoin had an Achilles' heel, it would be the loss of its recorded data. If the data were lost, then there would be nothing to stop an alternative set of records from taking its place and rewriting history. By running a node, we ensure that there are plentiful copies of this data.

From a self-serving perspective, running a Bitcoin node ensures that we are always able to access first-hand data about the state of Bitcoin and our wallets. If we rely on third parties to inform us of this information, we introduce a layer of risk and place our trust in someone else. If that trust is abused, we could be fooled into believing we have received bitcoin when in fact this was not the case. While a Bitcoin node does collect its data from online sources, since it collects data from multiple sources and it is able to validate and identify any discrepant data, it is more likely to provide you with the latest and most accurate information available.

We also help in situations where connectivity is limited, such as the time when Australia was cut off from the world wide internet for some time. In this case, users in Australia were inconvenienced for some time:

1. With limited connectivity, miners in Australia could not share their work quickly enough to compete effectively with the greater global network.
2. Users might see their transactions remain unconfirmed for longer periods of time.
3. Users may even see their transactions transition from confirmed to unconfirmed as nodes struggle to keep up with the chain of events being agreed upon by the greater network.

By operating a node in Australia, you were helping to link and share data in real-time with the rest of the network, and if you had a connection to the greater network, you would be helping to bridge the connection.

Once the internet was restored, your node would help to keep track of all the unconfirmed transactions in your country and share them with the greater global network so that they can be processed.

It should be noted that Bitcoin network does not need any sort of manual intervention to come to a shared agreement about the legitimate chain of events and continue operating as normal.