BECOME A BLOCKCHAIN EXPERT
Full Nodes (Miners)
Lightweight Nodes (bitcoin wallet)
Bitcoin Ledger
All of that is the job of participants on the network called “nodes,” which are also known as miners. Nodes are the computers or large computer systems that support the Bitcoin network and keep it running smoothly. Nodes are run by individuals or groups of people who contribute money toward buying powerful computer systems, known as “mining rigs.” Two types of nodes exist – full nodes and lightweight nodes. Full nodes keep a complete copy of the blockchain ledger (i.e., the giant Excel spreadsheet). This is a record of every single transaction that has ever occurred. This is currently more than 225 gigabytes in size. Lightweight nodes, on the other hand, only download a fraction of the blockchain. Lightweight nodes are used by most folks as a “bitcoin wallet” for bitcoin transactions. A lightweight node will communicate to a full node when it wants to transact. So the full nodes (or miners) run the
spreadsheet, but how do they keep the spreadsheet synchronized between them all? This is the key, considering the number of people who can run their own full node isn’t
limited. (See the figure above.) Let’s go back to Jim and Sally...
Jim wants to send one bitcoin to Sally. Sally creates a bitcoin wallet. Anyone can create one in a couple of minutes. When you create your wallet, two pieces of information are created for you... One is your “public key,” which is also known as a public address, or your bitcoin address. It’s a string of numbers and letters. Think of it like an account username. The other is your “private key,” which is effectively your bitcoin password, and you need to keep it safe. If you lose it, it means you lose access to your bitcoin. (No centralized entity exists that can recover your password for you. It isn’t like if you forget your Facebook password and you have
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November 2019
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