Quote from: DannyHamilton on April 30, 2018, 06:47:12 PM

Quote from: jackg on April 30, 2018, 06:20:22 PM

Quote from: HeRetiK on April 30, 2018, 05:03:59 PM

But from a technical perspective it seems like they could run a pruned node just as well, since they only care about current transactions. Or would a mining pool be prevented from publishing blocks if they are not connected to the network as a full node?

Something tells me they might not get accepted if they don't run a full node.

Why not?

A valid block is a valid block. The protocol and the rest of the network doesn't care how that block came into being, nor does the network know how that block came into being.

That's what I thought, thank you for confirming my suspicion. I was thinking that I may be missing a subtle technical reason for a mining pool being required to run a full node but I couldn't think of one.

Quote from: jackg on April 30, 2018, 07:04:24 PM

Quote from: DannyHamilton on April 30, 2018, 06:47:12 PM

Quote from: jackg on April 30, 2018, 06:20:22 PM

Or they'd get DDoS a rediculous amount if they tried to get away without running one.

How would you know if they are running a pruned node or not?

If the pool is big enough, there will be people who run analytics on it.

I'm pretty sure most miners just try which pool works best for them and then point their hashrate on it. Unfortunately people are barely caring about keeping the hashrate decentralized, I doubt many care about whether their pool of choice runs a full node or not as long as its reliable. Besides, if your pool is large enough you already got a big fat target painted on your back either way. There's plenty of reasons to DDoS a mining pool, them not running a full node probably being one of the pettiest.

Quote from: jackg on April 30, 2018, 07:04:24 PM

Quote from: DannyHamilton on April 30, 2018, 06:47:12 PM

Quote from: jackg on April 30, 2018, 06:20:22 PM

What is forgotton is that miners should also be the main node runners and they should be able to distribute the blockchain.

Miners should create valid blocks. That's all. They are welcome to run full nodes and distribute the blockchain if they want to, but there is no requirement for them to do so.

They get a profit from the adoption of a chain as more people will start in the coin. Newbies also generally probably pay higher fees than other older members who can wait on their transactions as there's not as much excitement with sending a transaction now as there was when I sent say my first transaction. A greater bandwidth means that more people cna download and run core well as there's less people wanting to access the data per node.

From a purely business-oriented perspective, miners don't care which chain to follow. Rationally speaking they will simply follow the currency that is the most profitable. I also don't think that miners care much about user experience when it comes to a newbie opting for the Bitcoin Core wallet.

Whether they should run a full node from a "corporate responsibility" point of view is a different question of course. But I doubt it meaningfully influences their bottom line.

Quote from: jackg on April 30, 2018, 06:20:22 PM

Also, if you have to reindex from a non-full node and you're bad a plotting failovers then the sync may take a bit longer initially.

That I could imagine to be a valid point of concern for a mining pool operator.