EP38 Bitcoin podcast with Bitcoin Q+A. (nodes)

Welcome back to BitByBit. Today I'm very excited. I've got Bitcoin Q&A joining me for a second time. Last time we discussed wallets and today we're going to be talking about nodes. We're going to talk about what they are, how to run them and why to run them. If you haven't already listened to our last episode, I suggest

you go back and have a listen. When you're learning about Bitcoin and learning how to use it, there's kind of an order of things. You're not really going to be setting up a node before you have a wallet running and you're also not really going to be able to use a wallet properly without any Bitcoin. So if you're

listening now and you haven't already got a little bit of Bitcoin, check out my sponsor, Coin Floor UK. It's really, really simple and they're Bitcoin only. For anyone who already has a wallet set up, that already has some Bitcoin. Enjoy.

Bitcoin Q&A, how are you my robot friend? Yeah, very well. Thank you very well. I'm looking forward to diving into our conversation today. I've just literally finished editing the last one and it's ready to go live today this evening so we're looking forward to getting that one

live. So this is number two. This is number two. That's going to go live first and then this one a week later. So anyone who's listening to this now or hopefully have already listened to our last conversation which was talking about wallets, everything to do with wallets, everything you need to know and all the

different types of wallets. And yeah, after recording that one, I reached straight out. You didn't, I was just like, right, we need to do this again because it was a really good episode. And I think that, you know, wallets is part of it and one of the useful things that people need to learn. And then sort of

the next step up and how to really become a power user, you need to run a node. So we'll jump into it. It kind of feels like the natural progression, doesn't it? You know, we discussed last time around the importance of holding your own keys and what sort of what that what that means to it to the average

user. I suppose like you just said, yeah, running your own nodes is kind of the next natural step really. Okay, so I think if we go through it a little bit like we did last time, I think that was good. And we managed to cover most if not all of it and we kind of kind of do the same again. So we start right at the

beginning. What is a node? Okay, let's try and keep this as basic as possible. Keep those words out of this one if we can. And so a node is basically a term for a computer or a piece of software that runs the Bitcoin software, the Bitcoin core software basically. So what that software does is effectively, it's your sort of

your gateway into the Bitcoin network. It's where your transactions are broadcast from and received into. So again, we touched on wallets last time. And so you can't use a wallet connected to the Bitcoin network without using a node. So one of the key points I think like everybody listening to this to remember

too is that if you are not using your own node, you are absolutely 100% using somebody else's. So, you know, I'm sure we'll get on to the nuances of that later on what that means. But essentially, a Bitcoin node is your gateway into them into the network and it's how you interact with the network. And so a

couple of things, key things that a node will do. It's basically your enforcer of your very own Bitcoin rule sect. And so you can kind of think of it like it stops you being cheated. It kind of checks all of your incoming transactions and check that those transactions meet the expected

requirements so that you're not being cheated and being sold. You know, sent fake Bitcoin, so to speak, you know, somebody's not trying to send you something that isn't what the network agrees is the rightful Bitcoin. So just speak. So you can think of it as something that's watching your back and

sort of verifying all of your incoming transactions to say, "Yeah, that matches the rule set that I'm running." So I agree that this is Bitcoin and it applies by all of the rules which we could probably cover off in a bit more detail later. So yeah, look at it as somebody, a piece of software that's

looking out for you basically to check that you're not being cheated. Okay, all right. And I've heard someone say before that it's kind of like if you bring it back into like physical world stuff that if you have, if you're dealing in say gold, this node is one of the things it's doing is effectively it's

like smelting down and checking that that gold is real and it's not a false transaction that someone's trying to put through and that's kind of one of the things that your node is doing is really is checking that, like you're saying it's watching out for you, but it's just checking that you are really receiving

Bitcoin. It's the real deal and if you're running your own node, there's no way for someone to, or if you're doing it properly anywhere, there's no way that anyone could cheat you. Yeah, exactly. And like it took some before, you know, if you're just using one of the basic wallets that's not connected to your own

node, essentially what you're doing there is you're using somebody else's node to verify your transaction for you. Now, the chances of that node being malicious are potentially slim or ultimately you are trusting that person's node. So in theory, that company or whoever whoever's node is could effectively

sort of make a sense of your transactions. They could sort of paint a different picture of Bitcoin for you, so to speak. So you might think that you're receiving what you think is Bitcoin and that could be on a completely different blockchain that says, you know, it could be say on a blockchain that's got 100 million

Bitcoin rather than there's 21 million Bitcoin that you and I and the rest of the network agree on. Yeah, okay. So yeah, I mean, I think like you say, it's like a piece of software watching your back is a really good way to put it. It's, it's the safest way and the best way that you can do things. So if we take a step

back, and you know, from hopefully everyone that's listening has already listened to our conversation about wallets, and for anyone who hasn't, I suggest you go and listen to that one first. It was about three episodes ago, I'll link it in the show notes as well. But from that point where we kind of

finished on, you know, if you're using a hardware wallet, use a cold card, since then we've had ledger, link everyone's details, which is not great. So if anyone listened to that, I'm even thought about using a ledger, I'd probably say now avoid them. Yeah. But so say, say you've gone for a cold card hardware wallet, or you've

gone for Samurai, and then you're running out on your phone. If you're just now using, let's say Samurai on the phone, because that's what probably most people would do to start. What if they don't run a node at this point? If set up Samurai, who is it that they're trusting? Who, whose node are they asking? So in the

Samurai example, they are trusted Samurai, Samurai server, Samurai nodes, wherever they may be across the world. So again, I'm a massive fan of the Samurai guys, very much doubt that they're malicious actors. But ultimately there is always that sort of very slight element of doubt list. If you're just using the

base of the wallet in its most basic form and connected to their service, ultimately you are pulling a little bit of trust into them being acting in good faith, and to sort of serve up the Bitcoin that you expect to be receiving on the correct chain. So yeah, that there is, and Samurai is no different,

whoever's node that you're connected to, you've always got that level of trust, and they're going to act in good faith, basically. Okay, all right, cool. So we now assume that most people who are listening to this have got a wallet already. So now they're interested in, okay, this sounds better to have the node. But why? I think

there's probably going to be more to it than just there's not that person in the middle, because some people are prepared to accept that little bit of trust. It's not what we would probably advise, but some people will be. Are there any other reasons to run a node? Yeah, so obviously, depending on the implementation, it does

grant you all those functions, things like access to lightning. Again, you don't necessarily need your own node to interact with the lightning network, but you know, some of the one, some of the implementation must give you that option.

There's also other things such as coin join applications. Again, you get that optionality, or you can run a BTC pay server, which is basically like your own online store, which I think is, you know, particularly for online merchants, there's quite a powerful option in terms of giving you the optionality to receive,

you know, censorship-resistant payments, you know, there's no pay power, anybody like that, they can stand in your way from receiving, you know, funds from whoever's buying your product online, basically, so I think that's quite a powerful tool. You can also get access to your own what's known as a block

explorer, so one of the most common ones that people would listen to this that would use will probably be something like wopstream.info, so essentially what that is is kind of a data set of the current state of the network, where you can look at the latest stats on transactions blocks, you can see where

your transaction sits within the mem pool, you know, the pool of transactions are waiting to be confirmed, and if you run your own nodes, you can actually run your own local copy of that, so if you were to be, let's say you sent some stats over to me, Max, and the network's quite busy as it is at the moment, and you were

wondering where that transaction is in the queue, so speaking, in the mem pool, you could look at your own block explorer, you could put the transaction identifier, identification number in to your own block explorer, and you could sort of check up on that transaction to see where it sits in a private way,

because again, if you were querying somebody else's nodes like wopstream.info, which is, again, one of the common ones, there's a potential threat model there that they know that your IP address costs you access in it online, and they can associate your IP address with that transaction ID, so... Could you just dig

a little bit deeper onto that, because a lot of people who are listening to this won't sort of maybe be aware of the surveillance companies that are lurking in the background, and, you know, obviously we're trying to use this as privately as possible, and if someone's not running a VPN, and in the case that

you've just talked about, what does that mean? Yeah, so I think I should probably start by saying I like to act online as if somebody's watching, because effectively that's what your internet provider can, they can see all of your internet traffic, so if you're just going on to Google, you're typing in your

transaction ID if that's the stuff that you just sent to me, you're going on to wopstream.info, potentially you should work on the thought process that your IP, your internet provider can see everything that you're doing, and so from wopstream, so you go on to wopstream's website, you go, you type in that

transaction ID, so now theoretically wopstream knows that this transaction belongs to your IP address, your internet provider knows exactly that you sent some stats to me, they know all the details about that transaction, because you've just done it over the internet, so they can see all that traffic, and so I

suppose that's where the power of running your own node on your own local network, you're sort of querying your own version of the Bitcoin network, and so you're not linking any of that sensitive personal data out to all of these potential adversaries, so you're going to let provide a wopstream.info

potentially anybody else who could be spying on your network, I suppose just to go to the extremes, you know if you were doing this in a internet cafe perhaps, and you're just doing that over clear net, you know, the regular internet, just potentially people could be spying on you there as well, so I think it's

quite a powerful thing to remember, to be mindful that just always work on the thought process that somebody might be watching, and so yeah just tying it back into the node thing, again if you're running your own node locally, and you've got your own block explorer, you can ask the question of a piece of software

that you trust, that's not being broadcast out to the wider world. Okay and so is there anything else to consider before someone just dives in and thinks right okay I'm gonna try this, what else is there to consider when thinking about running a node? Yeah I suppose it comes down to obviously

everybody's upgrades on different budgets, sends what sort of hardware you've got lying around, I'm sure we'll cover off the different types, and so you obviously got a look at which hardware you need to run it, your technical abilities of you know some of these things are easier to run than others, and your needs in

terms of what do you actually need to get out from from a node, can you just get by with just the basic software, you just want to validate your transactions and that's it, and technical abilities have covered, you've also got internet availability and speed, again not really a problem in most of the Western world

these days, you've also got storage considerations, you know the current size of the network at the moment, sorry current size is a blockchain at the moment, it's around about 300 gigabytes, so obviously if you've got a just a little notebook with 128 gigabyte hard drive, you're not gonna be able to run a node on

that computer, so the storage considerations and then there's also going back to the hardware thinking about do you want this device to be always on or switched on, again that's probably not going to be ideal if you've got a big power thirsty gaming desktop or even a laptop that you just don't want to

switch on all the time, it's going to start drawing quite a lot of power and start costing you know some it's latest electricity bill, so what what most people tend to do, the most common way to run one of these, one of these nodes is to run it on a single board computer, something like a Raspberry Pi 4 or a

VOC Pro 64, you know they're all pretty similar, very slightly in specification, but they're basically a credit card sized computer that you can sort of again dependent on the implementations which I'm sure we'll cover off, you just sort of be the specified software that you want to run into an

SD card, plug in your SSD, your hard drive and then you can you can get cracking them with downloading the blockchain and implementing this software, so again I think we'll get into the specifics of the different types later on but yes those are some of the considerations. Yeah and just before we

do dive in any further I just want to say like as a non-technical person I'm sort of getting better as time goes on but I was actually really, I found it quite daunting, like when I first got involved and people were talking about doing this and it kind of scared me off a little bit because I was like oh that

sounds really complicated, it sounds like you know it's not it's not really something that I'm gonna be able to do but once I dive in first of all it was easy even for someone like me it really wasn't that difficult and secondly I actually really enjoyed the process of doing it, it was fun because like to

actually build the thing and to play around with it like it was a little project and it took a day and it was just it was actually a really enjoyable thing to do so if anyone who's listening and like some of this maybe sounds a little bit daunting yeah don't be too put off because it is a lot of fun and

there are so many different options out there and I'm sure that for almost anyone there there's an option that's going to work for them so I think that's what options are they sorry I think just going back to completely echo your point around, again there's a lot of technical turn turn around when you when you talk about nodes and but

absolute credit to the guys that sort of put these projects together that we're gonna cover off in a minute and they've really sort of obfuscated away a lot of the difficulty and it really is super simple to get one offered running and so yeah I just wanted to shout out to the all the teams out there because they

really are they're the ones that are putting in the work to make this as easy as possible for everybody yeah definitely definitely and so there are lots of different teams working on lots of different projects and there are some great ones out there so what are the different options so I think I'll probably

split them into three categories that I'll start from the easiest which is basically you download what's called Bitcoin Core which is essentially a piece of software and that you would download onto an existing piece of hardware i.e. a laptop with enough storage or a desktop you literally just go onto

Bitcoin Core.org I think it is hit download that's got a simple graphical user interface there's a couple of clicks you'll start downloading the blockchain it'll download yourself onto the hard drive of the computer that you you've sort of downloaded it on and that will take you know depending on your

internet speed and your hardware three maybe well between two and four days and that's a simplest cheapest thing fastest way to do it again it comes with the drawbacks of if you're downloading onto a laptop or a desktop that that software is only running when that device is running so that'll probably be

the easiest and the fastest and cheapest way to do it and the second easiest way would be to buy sort of a pleasant play and node box so to speak so some examples of them you've got the novel dojo and and also the novel well just a

generic novel and what that essentially is is a single board computer and comes all packages up ready to go literally just a box you order it online it turns up at your house you plug it into your router switch it on you'd access it via a local web page so you literally just go on it pop in the the IP address of the

device that's assigned by your router again it comes with a really simple graphical user interface point and click nice and simple and it's designed to be in a box that just sort of sits next to your router perhaps it's always on it's a low power consumption device it's kind of a second and forget it device that

you just sort of interact with via a web page effectively another one that's exactly the same as that just got by a different company there is the my node one and which probably comes with one of the the most easy easiest user interface that's out there at the moment I think that's the one you've run is it Max yeah

I run a my node so I built mine from a Raspberry Pi and chose a like a cool case that I wanted and a fan and all the different bits and pieces so I had the sort of joy of putting it together but then I paid the $99 for the whatever they call it my node premium and yeah I love it like it's it really is like so

slick and so simple that once it was actually built and set up I was like oh what was all the fuss about like this is so slick this is like this isn't like cypherpunky someone you know who really knows what they're doing this is like honestly wants to set up I could probably teach my mum yeah so so just to finish

off with the sort of pull and play boxes the 9/0 one and the novel and the novel gojo obviously they come with the simplicity of the outlets you just put them play plug it into you and you're away and obviously they cost slightly more because of these companies need to make a profit so you're looking at the

9/0 one you're looking at just over $400 I've no idea what that converts into pounds the novel the standard one is $499 and then there's the novel dojo the beast the red beast which is pretty sexy if you ask me I think that retails when

you can get a hold of one because they are quite rare around $849 so and they do have they do come at an increased cost particularly the novel dojo but again they come with extra features like the the novel dojo it's got two storage it's got two SSDs for the Dunwood see something cut did back up so that's kind

of like the Bugatti of the nodes if you like and it's red isn't it so it's fast but it's definitely faster and it definitely looks the best so so yeah so we've covered Bitcoin call the simplest and cheapest way we've covered the plug-and-play boxes and then I think probably the most common way to do it

and in my opinion the best way to do it because you learn along the way is when you sort of buy the hardware yourself so again you're looking at a raspberry pi four and as an at cable an SD card an SSD which is a hard drive solid state hard drive would always recommend the solid state one over a spinning disc type just

for performance improvements really and hard disk drives can sometimes fail and for the for the minimal extra cost of a solid state one I would always advise everybody to go for one and just for reliability and longevity really and so so that's the the hardware that you'd need then it's just a case of picking the

project that you want to go with so the main three at the moment is we've touched on already the my nodes software and the pros of the my node software probably got the easiest user interface and it's literally just a point and click user interface everything package really nicely looks really good when

you you access it by a you know you know local webpage everything comes just really intuitive I think you'll agree Max yeah definitely it's really really easy to use it's and it's so slick it's just I don't know it just looks nice you can choose dark mode you can have like just I don't know it's everything that I

wanted and more out of a node and the ease of putting the thing together and and paying it's a one-off ninety nine dollar fee and that's just a way of supporting the devs who have put in all this work and and made it so easy to use and made so many other projects accessible from it that I think it's it's

an amazing price yeah it is and I'll probably just get because it's probably the common one at the moment before I move on to the other two projects just give a quick rundown of what that actually comes with so obviously you've got the core Bitcoin software which we've covered you've got LND which is a

lightning node which sits on top of your your Bitcoin implementation sure we'll cover up lightning a little bit later on you've got an electron server which is basically without going into too much detail it's kind of like a wallet connection interface so if you've got your cold card or if you've got your well

most of your mobile wallets will connect via electron server and the premium bit that you just touched on gives you remote access via the tour browser so you can sort of just just download the tour browser on your phone and that will give you a special one unit rest that you can sort of you can

think of it you know from anywhere in the world basically in a super private way where whilst we've got we've got RTL which is a ride the lightning that's effectively like a lightning node manager it's just sits on top of your lightning node and let you manage all your channels you know you can open new ones

close them make lightning payments like that you've also got BTC pay server which obviously I've covered up before you've got a BTC explorer again I've covered up before you've got dojo and Wilpool my two favorites so dojo is the back end for your samurai wallet and I'll come on to samurai just a touch more on this

soft the Wilpool is that is your 24/7 coin join mixing service so that's kind of like if you're a samurai user that's sort of a holy grail of coin join basically kind of a set it and forget it and you just you sit back and relax and get 24/7 remixing another another favorite of mine is it is the

mempool viewer which probably one of the ones I use the most of all the my node features gives you a beautiful visualization of the current state of the mempool so if you're looking to make a transaction it's pretty useful you can just hop on there look at your own local mempool again without leaking any

privacy private information you can see what sort of a fee rate would probably be best to use based on how fast you want that transaction to confirm onto the blockchain and then most of the these are all the new apps that have recently been added you've got caravan which is like a multi-seed

column you've got Spectre which is the same again it's for creating and managing multi-seed wallets finally you've got ln bits and from the whole which again are sort of lightning wallet tools so it's my node yet it's fantastic it's like the Swiss Army knife of Bitcoin knows at the moment just so

it's not all I'm not painting it to be a massively rosy picture my only criticism I think is Taylor the main guy obviously what he's achieved it's fantastic and but because he does it on his own sometimes the upgrades can can bust a few things and occasionally you know a short grade too quickly you might

run into a little bit of trouble and so different one thing to be wary of that me personally I always hang back with the latest upgrades and then just make sure that everything's running smoothly before for a couple of other users before we yeah take the plunge especially if we've got some funds on that node it's it pays

to be a bit cautious to be honest with you yeah that's the same sort of I find with everything with Bitcoin you know it's never that much for a bad idea to hold back a little bit and wait a couple of months or you know just just check that things are working because it's different to a lot of other software if

something crashes on your computer normally like you don't lose money but like you said if you've got if you've got funds sat there then something went wrong potentially you could lose them so it's better to be cautious yeah definitely moving on to the sort of the second one of the popular node

implementations it's the only one of the three I'm talking about now that I haven't actually ran so I can't speak from any level of authority basically but in terms of feature set it's very similar to my node with a little bit more focus on on the lightning side of things I get the impression that there's the

team from rust by blitz they're kind of a bit more cautious and the bit slower to release upgrades but the the impression I get is that when when they upgrade it's kind of evident back down and there's generally no there's no evidence battle tested so to speak and it's probably safe from what I've seen

the vast people it probably doesn't come with as an intuitive user interface so perhaps more for the slightly intermediate user but one I would like to run in the future because it does look like a really promising project and we got a couple of tools there that I'd like to try out and finally the last one of

the three build your own node implementation is the Ronin Dojo which personally really really fired up about at the moment they've got a big release coming out on Sunday I've actually been working with them to do some quality tested so this is basically the samurai users node built by samurai users for

samurai users and so you won't get any of your lightning applications or anything like that on the Ronin Dojo it's very much focused around being the ultimate for yours the ultimate companion for your samurai wallet so you've got you've got your basics there obviously you've got your Bitcoin core software you've got

your electron server which is touched on so you can connect technically you can connect any wallet to this Ronin Dojo it's just geared more towards samurai and you've got your local CLI which is touched on earlier which is your 24/7 remixing service you've got your own block explorer and you've got your own

sort of Dojo maintenance tool which is provides arguably the easiest way to connect your wallet to a node it's just it's essentially you open the app you scan a QR code boom that's it you connected to your own node it honestly couldn't be anything more than that I think that's one of the main the main

positive for me is it's just literally scan a QR code and boom you connected to your own node yeah yeah and some of the stuff that they've got in in being released pretty soon is awesome they've got so they've got their own

graphical user interface coming out that's got a built-in world pool and control they're bringing out quickly backups redundant storage hardware wallet into the integration I think this is gonna be a big one and they're gonna be enabling the ability for you to use postman spending tools such as

stone wall or stowaway things like that I'm not sure if you're familiar with those I get I get the basic concept but but maybe you could just explain yeah so again one of the most powerful things about samurai was is their postman expenditure so once you've used that their walk-off service you've effectively broken

what's called deterministic links so you you've given your your UTX shows your Bitcoin sort of a clean a clean past against anybody you know change the valence firms that might be tracking you on on the blockchain once you've been through that world pool service you've kind of broken those deterministic links

and anybody looking on on chains will look at that world for the transaction and they will not be able to say for sure which which one which of the imports match which are the outputs you've effectively broken those ties now obviously there's other coin doing services about I'm where most of them

fall down is that once they've sort of been through that mixed structure which you've just touched on this what a lot of users do is then kind of put it all back together again in one big lump which effectively completely undoes the whole point of mixing so they kind of paint all these fees mix all this that's

great and then they just select all and they sort of send it back to their hardware wallet merge it all back together again and sort of effectively tell anybody that's watching on chain yeah you know they can follow it from from one from A to B basically so the postman expenditure gives you a way to

spend those UTXOs as that piece those pieces of Bitcoin that have been sort of mixed it allows you to spend them in a privacy focused way so it was not the harm harm or you know any other privacy that you've gained from from using the coinjoy service so there's a couple of ways you can do that there's Stonewall

which is like a fake mini coinjoy you effectively mix with yourself but the way the transaction is constructed nobody looking on chain will be able to tell that you are effectively mixing with yourself you've got Stowaway which is an implementation of the pay-to-end point so again we're getting pretty

technical here but the postman expenditures effectively they're just tools that you could spend to other people or the samurai users or or not samurai users depending on the tool that you want to use to spend in a private way that maintains your privacy after you've been through through the

World Call service so yeah just sign up back into into Roni Dojo and that is one of the core services they offer probably the easiest way to implement that as well so yeah I think that covers off the three main ones pretty well yeah and so that means that so for someone who's thinking about running one you've you've

broken that down nice you said there's the three different options and also it's kind of different price points as well because you know maybe if someone's just dipping their toes in and they've bought a small amount of Bitcoin they probably don't want to go out and spend seven eight hundred dollars on an all

singing or dancing node you know they're they're probably not gonna want to do that it doesn't really make sense for them unless they're like fascinated by the tech so for someone like that maybe they could say okay well if I have the storage space I can actually do it for free and that is an option yeah

definitely yeah and so so that's definitely an option and a lot of people even if they are fairly heavily invested in using Bitcoin we'll still go for that option it's still a great option it's just obviously like you said you have to have that that computer running to use it and it will take up a lot of

storage in all that kind of stuff so that's one but it's free yes yeah it's free and but again like you say comes up comes of the trade-offs it's got to be on a device that's you know always on it's no good if you've got Bitcoin core on the laptop you've got your wallet connected to it and what you're on the other side

of the country and your laptop switched off you can't connect to that node that's where the power you know why the single ball computers like the Raspberry Pi running running dojo or anything like that the whole point of them is that they sit there they're quiet they don't cost lots of run they just always sat there

waiting for you to use them to transact or to receive anything like that yeah and then the kind of the like you said the one that you would suggest and for me as well I would suggest is that to actually build one of these things and I think for me it cost about 250 quid I want to say something yeah right yeah

250 quid for the hardware and about seven quid for a bottle of wine and my evening and that was it and and like I say like it genuinely was one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had to do with Bitcoin I love listening to podcasts I love messing around with this stuff but I really enjoyed actually like building

something physical something that wasn't software something that wasn't hypothetical like it or theoretically it was just like I can sit down and follow the instructions and build something and I've got something in front of me I've felt quite like I'd achieved something afterwards it was nice

yeah I think I touch something earlier but the actual process of going through important you know doing it doing the building yourself I personally got a lot out of it and I think it teaches you give you a better appreciation for the sort of inner workings of it you know obviously the average user isn't going to

go and sort of audit all the software or anything like that but I think it gives you that sort of base level of knowledge so that if you do need to go and do a bit of troubleshooting you know depending on the implementation again you know you've got the tools there to go and poke around a little bit and learn a bit

more if you want to and whereas if you build these pre-packaged ones they're nice and simple and easy to use but you might not have that you might be a bit scared to touch it so to speak because you think it's really technical box that some some widgets built in it in a cave somewhere like that

yeah yeah exactly and yeah and I think for anyone who's sort of falling a bit deeper down the rabbit hole and is really interested in this stuff you know it's not only does it mean that you learn more but also you are really securing your funds better and making sure that if you are using this stuff it

is it is the best and safest way which is important yeah and all of these projects those three projects I've just mentioned they've all got telegram groups you know they've all got a presence on Twitter and particularly the samurai focus groups again they're running dojo guys the support there is there's

literally somebody there 24/7 to hold your hand on anything that you want to do because there's quite a big community built around it and I'm not saying to them I know group and whatnot and so don't be afraid to you know if you do get stuff there's loads of guides out there there's video guides or hop into one of

these telegram groups and just ask the question the guys there have we got or not and you know they've heard all the questions there's no stupid one and they're well aware that this might be anybody's first foray into any form of you know building together even the most low powered computer like a Raspberry

Pi and they're sort of wired for that and they're all pretty welcome to take questions yeah yeah and like I've said before you know anyone who wants to reach out although I'm you know probably not as anywhere near as helpful as some of the other people you've mentioned but I'm always happy to help people if they

want a hand and you know you know you're the same with your website so you know no one's gonna buy it if you try and build one of these things and you have questions I have found that the Bitcoin community and like everyone who I've ever dealt with has been so helpful I've never had anyone made me feel ashamed

to ask or like I'm asking a stupid question although I'm sure I have asked really stupid questions people are very very welcoming and helpful yeah absolutely definitely don't be afraid to ask it's it's personally the way I've learned and you know I've learned more from those telegram groups and asking what

I thought at the time with the stupid questions and that's why you learn and you see this sort of common faults and and gain that ability to help other people as well and that's ultimately how the community goes isn't it yeah definitely definitely and there's there's always something around the corner

that you know once you've accomplished that there'd be something else you want to learn and it's what makes it exciting if it was just is this thing like it's useful to send payments and it's gonna become more valuable like it wouldn't really well I don't think it would hold all our interest quite so much I think

it's the fact that it is constantly changing and like there's always just something new and interesting and like world changing that's happening and that the people who are doing it just blow my mind how smart they are and like how they do this stuff but then they're so humble and they're just willing to help

people and you don't really get that in other industries like you're not gonna find people who would be so helpful and I think it's just because it's really early days and the people who are involved genuinely believe that this is gonna change the world so they want to help people yeah exactly and again those

three projects that I've just covered off that they're all being actively worked on because and so like you say they're almost changing by the week these projects with you know slow steady improvements to make user experience easier or it's simpler to connect to it or add in the next feature

or it's they're all ever changing these and it's all geared towards making it easier because at the end of the day it's doing all this sort of no running stuff from the outside looking in if you've got no technical background whatsoever it can seem really scary so I think even in the last 12 months the whole node

space has come a really really long way and I'm just really excited to see what it looks like in another 12 months because this stuff's just getting easier and easier yeah it is amazing how quickly it's moving and I think the other thing that we sort of you know we've covered so just like taking a step back we've

covered obviously from running your wallet why it's important to have you node and how it's safer and and also some of the amazing things that you can do with it that you mentioned but also and I think it's really important to say that the more nodes that are on this network like if you believe in Bitcoin

and you think that this is something that the world is better off having the more nodes that we have running the better for the system so maybe you could kind of go into that just a little bit you know we don't have to go too crazy technical but what does just running a node do for the system yeah so so one of

Bitcoin's major benefits is its decentralization and so what does that mean that that basically just means how distributed participants in the network are you know there's people all over the world in almost every country in the world I'll probably willing to participate in the network winning nodes or even

mining and so why is that a powerful thing it basically means that it would take a sort of coordinated attack from multiple countries at once if not all of them to go and sort of stop people running nodes and sort of to stop the network so the more people and the more distributed all these node

networks is across the globe the harder it is to stop think of it like a virus spreading across the world you know it is the bigger it is I can't imagine I can't imagine that that's quite it's quite app timing that is unfortunately lockdown stop Bitcoin which is nice so so I suppose to link it back to the

protocol itself obviously you may have used it with it listeners listening to this may have heard of like the block size wars and so to link that into the the sort of nodes talk and there was two factions in the back in 2017 I think it was that wanted to one wanted to increase the block size and one wanted

to keep it the same so the the implications of increasing the block size basically meant that the blockchain would grow at a much greater rate so the impact to the end user or the end node runner would mean that rather than needing say 300 gigabytes but the current Bitcoin blockchain is if that

block space was doubled it you know it would effectively the blockchain would grow twice as fast so that would mean that in the not-too-distant future to run your own Bitcoin node there's absolutely no way you'd be able to do it on a little raspberry pie the size of a credit card with your own hard drive

you know you need a massive server farm and so if that was the case and then the sort of so-called big blockers did win in the future it meant it would have been come very difficult for the average user to participate in a Bitcoin network that the right way in my opinion by running their own node and so that would

lead to a few powerful parties the people with access to the powerful server farms that could run there run that you know the Bitcoin software with this powerful equipment which would centralize the power into into a few hands and I should this there's the saying now I'm probably gonna butcher it

but something along the lines of too much power in too few hands is not a good outcome so again that's why it's important that we keep the block size as small as possible so that blockchain doesn't grow too fast and which makes it easier for you and I to run our own node and keep that network as decentralized

and as hard as possible yeah definitely and you know like we're talking now because we have an increase of block size it is possible to run these without really that much power and without crazy amounts of storage and like you said that is so important because the whole point in this is it's peer-to-peer and

that you can verify everything yourself and if you if you do let it centralize then you can't do that and then all the magic is gone it's it's not pointless but it's not as good just to put that into contact obviously the network's been running since 2009 or 2010 and somebody spinning up a node

today and so what we 11 to 12 years later can verify on a 30 pound single board computer they can verify every single transaction since 2000 since the inception of the network they can verify every transaction made on the on the entire network for the entire history of it in I suppose the worst

case scenario is probably about five days so I think again absolutely credit to the people that are working on this that fought to keep the block size small so that it allows regular users to do that yeah it's pretty amazing when you think about that like how many transactions and that you can just from

you say like a 30 pound computer you can say or you know or even just from your own computer you don't even have to spend the £8 you just have to spend the time to download your which we're going to initial block download and what that means and stuff in a set but yeah I mean that is like there's nothing

else on the planet that you can do that and verify that the supply is correct and you can see all the transactions and all this stuff and the fact that they've managed to make it so efficient is just amazing yeah the fact that you can do on a computer that fits inside your jeans pocket yeah it still amazes me when I

look fit there and look at me rush me pie on my desk at home and anything you know that that holds the copy of every transaction ever made on the network it's just mind-blowing you've talked a couple of times now about you know this three to five days that it takes to to download basically a copy of all these

transactions so what is that called why does it take that time and you know is there any way of making making that take less storage or take less time or do we have to have the whole thing or is there something else that people can do yeah so that is called the initial block download so you are again any of the

implementations that we've talked about today and run the same sort of on the line software where you would basically download it set it off running and it will it will then speak to the network to the to the nodes around it and it will sort of get information from them to say okay and tell me what your version of

event is and it will slowly download all of Bitcoin's history and when it's downloading all of those history all of those blocks which are the all of the previous transaction it's verifying them those blocks against its own inbuilt rule set that was in the software that you downloaded initially and so it slowly

sits there tuning the way between again bending on the hardware between two and five days and sits there verifying every single one as we touched on before checking that they all there's no cheating checking that they all are here for the rule set that you've just built into the software that you've

downloaded and basically it just slowly turns the way catches up to the current day so again that'll take between two and five days and we'll take off around about 300 gigabytes at the moment on a hard drive so you mentioned about is there anything that a user could do to take up less space so I'll preface this

with that they currently isn't a way for you not to have to download it all initially and but there is a setting called pruned mode and which basically it tells the software to say once you've downloaded it and validated it if it's not sort of current and up today throw it away and so you're only keeping the

most up-to-date sort of transaction set however you do still have to go from they want and verify that the mall which I think is very important because obviously that is the nature of the blockchain is that all of these transactions are linked together so it's important that you verify every single

one for yourself to check that there's no cheating and if so if you so wish you can choose the switch on pruned mode and I think it I've never ran a pruned node but I think it puts it down to somewhere around or slightly less than five gigabytes so a massive decrease and the only trade-off with that is

obviously your node isn't able then to sort of participate in a network in the fact that it can't help other nodes start up and so if there was another node to start up and ask your node say hey can you tell me what your your version of events are you haven't got that version of events saved so to speak you've had

it validated it and thrown it away so it's not really a massive risk but obviously if everybody was to do this it might cause issues in the future but the fact that you go to the trouble of downloading it in the first place most people just keep it just to sort of support the network so to speak I guess

there's just sort of niche cases where you know someone might not want to go and buy the extra hardware and they might want to run it on their PC or laptop and then they say well you know I don't really want to use 300 and whatever it is gig and then obviously growing over time right now maybe you know maybe in the

future I'll do it so they might do that and then they free up the space on there so although like it's not I think I bought one terabyte SSD and it was like it was a good one for I don't know it's about 110 quid that's about to go and wait from you yeah it's not like you know obviously you can do it cheaper and

you can do the prune node and all this sort of stuff which is great to have the option but it's not crazy money not really and like you said these these SSDs these hard drives that they're built for longevity they're gonna last a long time so you know for me it makes sense if you go into the the pain of

having to wait between two and five days to do the initial block downloads you know she can afford to keep the storage it makes sense really yeah okay that's cool well I think we've kind of covered the basics of or at least I think you can tell me if I've missed something but we've covered the basics of why someone

might want to run a node if they do decide that they want to run a node the different options they have then we've talked about sort of the the different things that it helps unlock like the sort of superpowers it unlocks and and why it's safer and is there anything else that we've not gone through for

people who don't run nodes yet because if there isn't anything we've missed then what I'd like to do is actually pick your brains myself as someone who runs a node and I don't think I'm the only person who does this a runner node but I don't really use it that much yet and I'd like to use some of the features

a little bit more and then actually use it to its full potential yeah I think we've we've covered the basics all they'll say is and is use the opportunity to show a little bit I've got a node comparison and on my website which sort of lists all the features and the pros and cons of each of the ones I've talked

about today so there's people that don't have a look at that before you take the plunge and it might help identify sort of what's important to you and you know I could say these have got slightly different features you know if you want absolute simplicity and don't mind spending a bit more you might decide to

go for a common play and if you absolutely help them for having lightning features you would naturally gravitate more towards rest by blitz or the mine ode or if you're a die-hard samurai fan and you're obviously gonna default to that rowing dojo and so it just comes down to running a node should should

without guilt be looked at as a selfish thing don't do it because you want to support the network do it because you want it to work for you and you want it to have your back like we've touched on earlier yeah okay and I'm gonna link that in the show notes but for anyone who's listening I might want to type it in now it's Bitcoin qna.com

that's it yeah and the extension for the this comparison thing is slash node compare once you get actually onto your website it's really easy to navigate you know everything's laid out really simply and yeah it's it's actually I said you before it's actually kind of similar to the my node layout and so now

I always have my my node stuff up and I have yours and now I have both my screens look really slick and then put together well so yeah you know what that's now you said it on the first podcast we did I can't see it now and I kind of feel a little bit bad I hope Taylor doesn't think that I've just

blatantly cocky style it should take that as a compliment I would if you know if I'd have done that I'd take that as a compliment I think it looks awesome I think my nose done a great job and your website's brilliant as well and like say because I have the two screens together it all ties in nicely which

makes my office look better so yeah and honestly like I've said it before but it really is a service and what you're doing is so so useful and it's helped me a lot it's something that I've been digging in like more and more with your website because it's so good bite size little bits where you know you don't

have to sort of open up an article and it takes you two hours to read through it and it's like crazy technical and difficult and it puts it puts me off a lot of the time whereas with yours like I can just think okay you know what is that I want to learn about coin join today I click through and you've just

got everything in just really simplified nice way of going through it and then if I want to go into more detail I can and you've got all the links so you've done an amazing job and for anyone again who's listening now and you haven't definitely definitely go and check it out it's I really think it's one of if

not the best resource out there at the moment very kind to appreciate and nice to hear that you know that's exactly what I'm going for is it's shortened to the point resources that people can go and just learn about a specific subject without getting too much into the weeds and then you know signposting them on to

sort of more in-depth resources if they want to delve a little bit deeper and the only thing the only other thing I would add is probably just make sure you check out the article section as well I've written a few pieces on sort of the common things that people are going to see and touch and you know the common

wallet to common hardware wallets bits about you know a couple of the node software they've got one on running dojo got one on my node and where it goes a little bit into the specific or very specific product so you can delve a little bit deeper so yeah just make sure you check them out as well yeah and so

for people who had listened to our wallet conversation as well and we you'd obviously said like blue wallet or samurai you've got articles for both of those on there so if people want to dig a little bit deeper definitely go and check those out yeah for sure okay so now selfishly I'd like to pick your

reigns if that's all right I hope that it is useful for other people because like I said I don't think I'm the only person that's like crazy excited about Bitcoin and just kind of just like right you know the thing to do is run a node and I'm gonna do that and I set it up and and now kind of it sits there and

you know I do the upgrades and I see the things that are happening and like I played around with some of it but I think I said you before my goal is to have my website have BTC pay server running have anything that I earn from my sales on there that then goes straight into my hardware wallet via you know whichever

is gonna be the best system electron personal server or something like that but I haven't actually said it all up properly yet so for someone who let's just say someone like me who's got my node running and let's just say that's all you've done you haven't got the other bits what would you suggest is

first step that someone can take to getting to that kind of setup where you could be in well just just using Bitcoin and you're in that circular economy all right so I'll use your specific example often I'm aware that you you run at my node and you are samurai users that right yeah yeah so for me in my

first recommendation for you to be with the connect your samurai wallet to your dojo and so again just for a bit of context obviously samurai is the mobile wallet best one out there if you ask me and and dojo is just like the put it simply as like a connection assistant that allows you to your mobile what to

speak to your own node so dojo is is sort of baked into my node and see you basically enable the dojo on your my node which would allow you to then sort of pull up a QR code within the tour browser that you can scan with your samurai wallet and then literally that day you are your mobile wallet now is

talking to your own node so any transactions that you send or receive or any wallet queries that you do within samurai wallet and it's going to be querying your own node you're not going to leak in any privacy you don't need to trust the samurai servers or anybody else's node so I think for me that will be

step number one is that's the main reason why you want to know you know don't just run want to support the network do it it selfishly so that you can verify your own transactions without sort of relying on anybody else that would be stuck one I don't know whether you've got that far yet or I haven't got that

far and I'll tell you why is that so like I feel comfortable with my samurai wallet and I'm like I'm trying to be as private as possible basically and so I was like okay right I have a separate device to run samurai arms so it was a case of then going to get a pixel 3a and then I flashed graphene onto that and

the pixel 3a was bought with cash and blah blah blah I went through all of that stuff so I'm comfortable now that right that's private and the transaction is coming out of that a private and it runs over tall but what I was worried about was like if I then link it to my node which is then running on my home

network even though I know that my node connects over tall like I was worried that there was somehow be some leak which would then link my IP or leak my IP somehow and that that would then be linked to my transactions and it would actually hurt my privacy and so I've kind of held back yeah not at all you

absolutely right is that the beauty of both my node and samurai is that they both run over tall so there is no there's no IP address leakage or anything like that and again you do have the optionality to switch both of those off but they run over tall by default and that's basically to protect your privacy so

yeah obviously you've done some quite relatively advanced steps there in terms of you know flashing graphene onto your phone the only sort of hole in your that whole processes at the moment is again you have a reliance on the samurai service so your transactions are going through their node and not your own so

would certainly say you know take the plunge enable that dojo and what you need to do any login to your dojo meeting the tool by the Tor browser that'll pop straight up with a QR code and you let you just scan it with your phone and that bit you connected and one word of warning and it's obviously you if you've

got any funds in that samurai wallet right now they've sort of already been leaked so to speak to the samurai service so they sort of know that your wallet address is holding that those funds obviously samurai doesn't operate with any personal identification whatsoever you know you don't know you

don't have to put an email address or anything like that but it's always good advice to start a fresh wallet when you connect to dojo just so you're starting a fresh basically so so you're not kind of creating a wallet leaking the information and then sort of trying to take back your privacy you are sort of

starting with the privacy first and by connecting to your own node and then you and then you sort of get the funds in there after that that'll be that's the sort of optimal way to do it okay yeah and that's easy enough to do okay so yeah that I think that's really good advice so my fears it's really easy to get just

like hyper paranoid because the more that you think about privacy like the more that I've started thinking about it the more I realize like how easy it is to make a mistake and how many dirty surveillance companies there are out there and like it sort of it can get you can get quite paranoid about it but

it's good to know that actually that is a safer way of doing it yeah and like I could say but I'll take on these and these wallet and no teams by running it over tour by default they're kind of making privacy the de facto mode sort of thing which again I sleep credit to the guys for doing that in terms of you've

already got privacy and without even thinking of it you just run the software and you're already talking over you it's all done for you which is obviously great and again it's just adding to that user experience and when people do inevitably go down that privacy rabbit hole you know they start to see the

benefits of oh this is already running over tour and which obviously is fantastic okay that's that's awesome so that will definitely be my next project and I'm hoping to do a video or a walkthrough for other people who will think this is useful as well and might be running my node I'm gonna try and do that going

forward so that as I'm learning other people do as well yeah so okay that that'll be the next one and then so that sort of sorts out my hot wallet and my coin join and linking that to my node and then that's like that that side is as near-perfect as it can get or as near-perfect as you can get for someone

like me I'm sure there are for more advanced users there are other ways but for me that sounds perfect so what about then I've seen that they have like the electrons in there but is that electron personal server or is that just electrum so that is electron in terms of my nodes well in terms of all of the

ones we talked about today the all run electron rust server which is kind of like a slim down version so so what that is effectively I'll keep it simple as possible is it kind of sits on top of your Bitcoin node and it indexes the transactions that are relevant to the wallets that you want to connect so it

allows you to sort of query and wallet balances or transactions faster than it would be to use the underlying Bitcoin software so let's say again you've set up me my nodes you've got Bitcoin running you'll then have an option to enable electron rust server well it's just called electron server on the

user interface same for the Ronin Dojo team again it's just a case of enabling it that'll then take roughly sort of anywhere between six hours to 12 hours to sort of index the blockchain so it's basically going through what you've already downloaded indexing it putting it in putting it into a an easy

to read format for itself and so what that'll then once that's up and running then that will then allow you to connect well most wallet to the common one if you're talking about hardware wallet interfaces would be electron desktop wallet so again you know it's in with the theme of electron and which you

basically just a desktop wallet interface comes with all I think we touched on it in the last episode much where comes with all of the basic features and but it also gives you the functionality to connect say your cold card or your treasure or any of your hardware wallets so it didn't interface for you to interact

with those hardware wallets and manage their transactions in a way that is private so so where do we get the privacy bit from so you download the electron desktop wallet connect that to the electron server that is running on your my node those two were taught to one another in a private way so any time

that you instigate or receive transactions into electron desktop which would be linked to any of your hardware wallets it's only querying your electron server so again it comes with a lot of benefits that we talked about so that it's not leaking any of that private information it's not asking

anybody else's node again it's it's the the pinnacle of operating as privately as you can when you're interacting with the network and and the beauty of the hardware wallet integration with election is that obviously your private keys again we touched on this last time your private keys stay on the hardware wallet

which is one of the main benefits of them so if somebody got access to your electron wallet without that hardware wallet they couldn't send any of the funds out of there you know that that's the sort of added benefit that you get from them so yeah electric server again really simply just just something that

indexes the blockchain and allows all the wallets to talk to it like a think of it as a translator yeah okay and and so like in theory if I was to have a cold card wallet what would I do I'd set up a lecture I'd give it like an ex-pub or something like that and then it would be able to see any transactions in or out

from that wallet and I'd be able to interact with it from a lecture yeah so you'd open a lecture you'd see all of your transactions you'd see your balances and everything like that because you've given it sort of a view only into your wallet and you can then create those transactions or receive

transactions and then you know pass those across to your cold card to be signed sign them right okay and then see you pass it back and forth with an SD card again this is sort of ultimate privacy and ultimate sort of pin-foil hat mode really where you're not connecting that those private keys to anything at all

it's all being short on an SD card and I've actually chilled found again I've actually got a guide in my article section on doing exactly what we've just said of connecting it to the electron and you know walking it through step-by-step so yeah urge people to have a read of that and there's lots of

screenshots there and videos and might help sort of paint a better picture and listening to something on the podcast we've got something in front of you yeah well I will be going through that myself then because that sounds like the sort of one of the steps that I'm kind of missing at the moment which which would

be really useful so okay so that makes sense so we Electrum would be very useful and and obviously my samurai stuff as well and then kind of final piece to the puzzle for me if we kind of leave lightning aside for now because all I'm doing on my website is selling my art

which wouldn't really be lightning and lightning transaction that be on chain if I'm to because again BTC pay server is in there like I can see BTC pay server in in my node but how would I go about let's say I set it up on my website someone pays me they buy something from my website would BTC pay

server then have an ex-pup key spit money or Bitcoin to my hardware wallet and I could then see all these transactions from my Electrum server that's the general and the way you know that BTC pay server works the specific

implementations within my node and I think Raspberry Blitz currently come with the issues that you can only expose the full features of it interacting with your node over your local network which obviously if you're selling art in your instance are online somebody to securely access your BTC pay server

that's connected to your node it needs to be on your local network which is obviously not great so I think that catches a lot of people out and certainly did me when I first started looking into it so but basically there's no sort of unless you really really know what you're doing there's no safe and secure way to

sort of expose that out to the wider internet certainly that's connected to your own node anyway what most people do is they run an instance of BTC pay server on a virtual private server and so it would be exactly the same interface it also goes directly into the wallet that you specify and it's a really you know

slick interface but obviously it's not being backed by your own node so there is and a trade off there that you're trusting somebody else's you know virtual private server basically and but obviously these virtual private servers are ran on and big powerful servers that are protected from denial of service

attacked and things like that which your home networks won't have and there are there is an implementation coming to the RASPY Blitz which they've announced I think last week which is called IP to tour which without me butchering it because I haven't walked into it properly is a way for you to expose your node to the

outside world in a more secure manner I think it works something like a subscription service where you might pay I think it's something really to like 40 saps for a week to run this service I'm not sure on the specifics of how it works but it would imagine that could be a fix to to most people's problems of

you know not having the need to run a private server which obviously costs a little bit more you know you're looking at sort of I think around 15 to 20 pounds a month to do to sort of run that BTC pay server in the cloud so yeah it's not quite the golden bullet in the moment and it certainly caught me out when you

know I just saw BTC patients but oh great you know I can I can make a store online and everybody will find it and yeah unfortunately it's not quite there yeah but I think this IP to tour that the Raspberry Blitz guys are working on might be a fix for that interesting see I didn't I didn't know that I just

thought okay there'll be a way to have this you know private and I wasn't aware of that so but like you said like these things move fast I'm sure will blink and then this stuff will be here but so for me now almost and you know you can correct me if this is wrong but what I'm almost thinking is I'd just have on the

website Bitcoin accepted and then maybe do something like if somebody wants to purchase something I'll say okay I'll send you an address and then that person could pay me and I would maybe then run that through samurai and then once it's

gone through samurai then I would send it to my cold card and then I can monitor that from Electrum and just maybe miss out for now that extra step of having a BTC pay server because it seems like it would either cost extra money or harm my privacy or a bit of both yeah so two comments on what you just said there

is number one and just what would advise users to be cautious of yes absolutely correct the best idea to run it through Whirlpool and just to sort of obfuscate that transaction history and just be mindful that if you're sending to a to cold storage after that and obviously want it out of of your

samurai wallet and you don't have those post-and-expend tools so it just be wary that if you're sending it to a cold card and obviously you know some we're gonna be safe and secure and but it's what you do with it after you sort of spend it out of your cold card if you were to merge it back together you

potentially from doing all that good that you've gained from Whirlpool so just thought I'd add that in there really just you know those people not to be so hasty around yes hardware wallet has got great benefits but they also come the trade-offs of around coin control particularly if you just come out of

Whirlpool and the other solution that might sort of fix your problem is visit the project called BTC paid jungle and what that is basically is a cloud funded project that runs it runs an instance of BTC pay server on a Microsoft as your server farm and so they pay for that via community funding but you can just

you can go on there spin up a BTC pay service store and again a little bit of trust is obviously your trust in them it's their node and but you can go on create a BTC pay service exactly the same interface it looked identical you can create your store you can add your art to it you can put your own export in

there from your cold card or from your samurai wallet and so when somebody goes on there buys your art the funds go directly into whichever wallet you specify and it's completely free and obviously these guys don't need to pay server costs so there's anybody that does take this option does donate to them

even if it's a small amount just to go towards their annual service fees but that's certainly what I use the donations on my site Mac so I've obviously got first-hand experience of setting that up so happy to sort of support there if it needs to be it might be a solution for you certainly in the short term

yeah well that sounds interesting and yeah anyone listening go and support now Bitcoin Q&A.com because you know this is this is really useful for me and I'm sure for everyone listening and I know or I know how much work goes into doing what I'm doing so I can only imagine the work that's going in to what you're

doing so anyone who is listening and thinking you know this is really helpful and I want to try this out and do a donation go and do it and it means that these kind of things can keep going and Bitcoin Q&A can keep helping people yeah appreciate it and obviously yeah yeah appreciate it and it's a good

way to get a feel for BTC pay server as well and you know how it looks and how it works from the customers point of view really yeah definitely and yeah like I say I'll try those things out I think I'll start with Samurai and yeah it would be exciting to start using the node and you know step-by-step it's

things are getting better and it's interesting to hear you say about BTC pay server because I just I just didn't even cross my mind it really didn't even cross my mind because I was just like yeah this is all gonna be slick and and private and you know not that it's not slick it's a great project but you

know I think I'll probably wait six months for that that step yeah like I say I'm pretty sure there is a kind of workaround whether you can do what again it's far beyond my technical expertise as to how you would expose that without sort of completely butchering your home network and being liable to denial of

service attacks and just it just let me slope so I would stick to the to the guide rails up for the time being if like me you don't really know Ian you know how to do it that's that's great thank you for going through that with me because I think I would have wasted a lot of time on it but maybe wouldn't have

been necessary and could be better spent with the other things you've mentioned so yeah I think I hope anyway that that has given everyone who wasn't already running a node the different options of how to run one and what the options are and also for people like me who maybe are already running a node but

not quite sure how to set it up properly or a little bit scared of leaking privacy and all that kind of stuff I hope that I'll talk towards the end as help those people is there anything else on nodes that you wanted to cover or that you think we've missed that would be helpful for people yeah and now I think

we've covered the basics like to say there's loads of resources out there and just want to reiterate you know for the people please don't and be afraid to ask if you're unsure like you said earlier that's it really isn't as difficult as you might think just ignore the buzzwords there's there's guides out there for

all of them you know there's loads of guys from I know being the common one the running dojo guys got a really in-depth wiki page and so the last five lips you know they get holds very it's very comprehensive so there's loads of help out there you just sort of go fight your way through the noise to pick out

you know the one that's relevant for you basically yeah okay perfect well I think we'll wrap it up there and what we'll do as well is I've really enjoyed this it's been something that's really helpful for me to learn a little bit more and I'd really like to do it again I'd like to cover some of the other queries

that I have and that I think other users have so yeah it's really nice to be able to collaborate with you and have someone who can sort of hold my hand through all of this and explain it and I'm sure the listeners will be finding it really useful so I look forward to maybe next week doing another one with

you and we'll release a few over the coming weeks and yeah I hope it will cover all the questions that people have yeah sounds good I look forward to it like you say anything that the myself or yourself if we can put out content and that pushes even one person to take the plunge and run their own node then it's

job done for me excellent thanks for today and we will speak again soon pleasure thanks Max