Hi Guys
Hoping some of the smarter people here can educate me. I see a lot of mentions of run your own node. But what is the point of it? If my node never wins a block then what impact can it actually have on bitcoins security?
I see a reason for doing it if you are a merchant and want to see if transactions are sent to you immediately, or if you want to do it for LN. But why run one as a normal bitcoin dude?
A non-mining node allows you to see what consensus rules are in use. If every full node were owned by the miners, they could have changed the consensus rules (like printing more bitcoins, removing the supply cap, reversing transactions etc) without you knowing it.
If they try to pull any crap like that now, non-mining nodes will reject their shit. Full non-mining nodes still need the hash power though, so blockchain can move forward.
Think it like this way:
Bitcoin = A massive full node network. If somebody tries to cheat this network, he will be ignored.