Using thin clients for full nodes

Thin clients rely on a server, so their performance totally hinges on the network connection. They come with ports for various peripherals, like SD cards, which can boost their efficiency, and they play well with Raspberry Pi. Just like full nodes on desktops, they also need a stable network connection 24/7 to function properly. The cool thing about thin clients being server-based is that they lighten the load on your system, which helps save power. Plus, setting up a full node with a thin client is usually cheaper. I’ve noticed some pros and cons, like server failures being a risk, but I haven’t come across many people actually using these devices for full nodes, and I’m curious if they have any serious security issues. I found only one thread on reddit discussing it. What kind of problems could pop up when running a full node on these devices? I’m thinking about giving it a shot myself.

Perfectly possible. Generally, you wouldn't want to run a Raspberry Pi as a production server because it is quite underpowered and the alternative isn't that much more expensive. There is no vulnerabilities with it, it is just another computer but smaller and cheaper. If you want to run a node on it, be prepared to use HDD instead of an SD card. The constant IO operations will stain your SD card and you would suffer from slow synchronization as well. You can synchronize it on another computer before copying it over. It is a pain in the ass to set it up on Raspberry Pi and it would probably be better to just get a used computer to run your node. The cost differential isn't too significant.

Take a look at: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5399730 Can you? Yes with a lot of tinkering. Should you? As a learning experience and geek project, why not. As a node you NEED to have up and running to transact. No. There are a lot of hardware devices that CAN run a node (and other things) should they is an entirely different discussion. -Dave

For now, Bitcoin Core still works with 2GB of RAM and a single thread, as long as you're only using a terminal to connect and are not running anything else. You may have to reduce the mempool size and dbcache to get responsive performance, but that's about it. The kernel itself only uses about 256MB of memory, so there's not much to gain by recompiling it.

The 256MB number is based on my own observations of running Linux systems, but from Bitcoin Core's point of view, whether you save 50MB or 250MB by recompiling the kernel is negligible because Core makes use of half a gigabyte itself after initialization, which increases as additional blocks are verified and the dbcache is filled. Of course, Core will struggle with the minimum memory that I posted, but it will hang with less memory while using swap space.

If you disable wallet and stuff, it might be possible. I was running Bitcoin Core on a 1GB ram VPS at one point in time, though it was extremely, extremely optimized and it was definitely struggling with regards to IDB. However, CLI was perfectly responsive, and it didn't crash though you had to use your resources wisely. Anyhow, thread count doesn't matter as much as IPC. Raspberry Pi 4 isn't very good at synchronization even if you were to use multi-threading. It was constantly overheating and throttling itself. Unbearable to use.

I have had a few 'nodes in a box' over the years umbrel, mynode, raspiblitz, and although at times they did overheat and throttle it was USUALLY an external hardware issue. i.e. it was in a case and the fan died. Or in a case with internal fan and the case itself was a heatsink but it got covered so there was 0 air movement. But open with a finned heatsink on it never had an issue. The bigger problem that I kept running into was that even the 'name brand' power adapters were crap. -Dave

I created a topic about a cheap pay by the hour VPS provider a couple months ago, and paid about half a dollar for a full IBD (with pruning). They're throttling CPU at that price, but it avoids being kicked off as a noisy neighbor. It just gets slower, unless you pay more. VPS prices have been dropping faster than the blockchain is growing, so I don't expect memory load to ever be a problem again.

Have you guys tried running Core in the bare minimum required RAM? I have been running Core under a 4 GB RAM, and it's painfully slow sometimes. When it does the consistent recent blocks check during startup, it can take up to half hour. I can't imagine someone running Core with a quarter of that amount of RAM, let alone one eighth of that (256 MB). In fact, 1 GB is at least required. I'm curious if it's worth it to run Bitcoin projects on such VPSes. DigitalOcean might come a lot more expensive, but it's something to trust. I wouldn't deposit anything on an unknown VPS service. (You used that VPS just for bitcoin-cli RPC, right?)

I've seen your thread. While trotting CPU seems to be common outcome, i recall people mention few provider give warning about either upgrade to more expensive plan or switch to dedicated server with threat their VPS could be terminated if they don't do so. That's true. If people don't mind using unpopular provider, there are few provider who offer >= 500GB storage for less than $20/month. Which is outdated. Since it mention 340GB blockchain size, it was probably last updated during middle of 2021[1]. Between that we see ~1.5x UTXO[2] and average block size[3] growth. I expect there would be noticeable performance difference with only 1GB of RAM. [1] https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/charts/blockchain-size [2] https://statoshi.info/d/000000009/unspent-transaction-output-set?orgId=1&from=1619827200000&to=now&viewPanel=6&refresh=5s [3] https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/charts/average-block-size

I did, when I started with Bitcoin (8 years ago). I ran a backup-version of Bitcoin Core on a netbook with 2 GB RAM, but eventually gave up when it took too long to catch up downloading the blockchain every time I turned it on. Nowadays, I'm quite satisfied with 8 GB of RAM to run Bitcoin Core, although more is always better. Is that with chainstate on HDD or on SSD? That makes a huge difference. That website also says you need 350 GB disk space. It's slightly outdated. I'm curious if it's worth it to run Bitcoin projects on such VPSes. DigitalOcean might come a lot more expensive, but it's something to trust. I wouldn't deposit anything on an unknown VPS service. (You used that VPS just for bitcoin-cli RPC, right?)[/quote] DigitalOcean wants my credit card, so I won't use them. In my case, I only used the VPS to test how long it would take to sync. I wouldn't feel safe storing funds on a server. It would be cool though, to combine my campaign manager services with my post scraping archive: each qualifying post could be paid within 10 seconds! I only saw this post later: It depends on the host. I've also had success in doing my own "throttling" with cpulimit and cputool. If you're on a shared server, obviously you can't take all resources for too long. I've received a warning email too from another host before I learned about throttling. I've seen much better deals (say 2 TB for $6 per month), but those aren't meant for active disk usage. And the low end servers tend to be less reliable: great for testing, but I wouldn't recommend using them as a production server.

Take into account that this year, memory usage from unconfirmed transactions has reached an ATH. I don't have evidence, beyond the fact that we all were frustrated with Ordinals, and it lasted for months. Not just a week as in 2017. Even as we speak, memory used in my node is 300 / 300 MB, purging any transaction with < 3.02 sat/vb. (Do you guys remember the days we were paying 1 sat/vb and have it confirmed in 10-20 minutes? The nostalgia hits me hard.  ) VPS prices may be dropping faster than blockchain's growth, but the overall performance will get worse overtime if you don't buy yourself something better. HDD. Do we have comparisons with SSD so I can check? If you ever deposited funds to ChipMixer, then you've stored funds on DigitalOcean[1]. But, my point is that you can't retain custody if you want to develop some big project, unless you turn your house into a data center.   [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1935098.msg61930512#msg61930512

I've tested it in the past, and moving chainstate to SSD made all the difference. I haven't gone back, although I still have my blocks on HDD. I haven't tried it, but knowing Linux, there's probably a way to do it. You can start by using cputool, which can limit the system load for a process. So on a cheap VPS, set it up to keep the load under for instance 0.2. "Load" is caused by different things, and that includes disk I/O. So it may be a start. It didn't work on all VPSses though, I think it works on OpenVZ but doesn't work on KVM. Another way to reduce disk I/O is by installing enough RAM I've seen good hosts on Lowendtalk.com, and I've seen hosts disappear (after I paid for a year). So your milage may vary

FWIW: my favourite for price/performance at the moment is Racknerd. It's a lot more expensive on their website, offers on Lowendtalk are much better. Ramnode seems to be much more solid, but it's a different price level. Both accept Bitcoin.