Empowering Users: How Ethereum’s Low Node Requirements Promote True Decentralization... | Devcon SEA

Hello. How are you? Thank you for coming. Um Yeah. A quick uh about us.

Uh we help users to run Ethereum nodes in low-power devices such as, you know, arm boards like a Rock 5B or or Orange Pi. Uh and yeah, basically this is what we do. And uh so, let's talk about running nodes. Um this uh was the first uh our first message that we sent to Reddit uh in 2016. Uh it was about running uh nodes in a Raspberry Pi 3.

It went great. And turns out that uh 8 years later, you can still run a full node, an archive node, or a staking node on this kind of devices, a similar device such as uh as I said uh the Rock 5 or or or the Orange Pi 5. Um so, why? Why why do we care? Why the community cares?

Uh why the researchers care? Why the devs care about uh running nodes on this on these devices on on commodity hardware? Well, first of all, um the core purpose of the blockchain is to trust no one, to verify yourself. So, you need a node to do that, right? And second, um equally important, uh this helps uh individuals running nodes uh helps the decentralization of of the network.

So, how? Well, if thousands of individuals run nodes at home, you have anyone can interact with the Ethereum blockchain. Anyone, no third parties, you don't depend on anything. Uh nodes are distributed over the world. A decentralized network should be consistent and operational.

Uh pretty much 99% of of uptime uh for Ethereum. The network can be used by anyone but anyone anywhere. And uh additionally, if the lower staking barriers are if the staking barriers are low, uh solo stakers can participate in securing the network. So, what happened if uh if users uh uh there are no users, no no individuals running nodes? So, let's take a let's take a the the example of Solana, for example.

Um the Solana's approach is about uh specialized nodes. As you can see, uh their requirements are uh data center-like. Uh I mean, 256 GB of RAM, uh four disks, uh a huge uh bandwidth for for network. So, nobody owns these kind of of resources at home. So, you cannot run a home uh a network at sorry, a node at home.

Uh so, you need to go to a data center and pay for for cloud services or whatever. So, these are two different approaches, home node runners versus specialized nodes. So, the question is about decentralization, is a network without home runners decentralized? Well, if you see the Nakamoto coefficient, which is basically uh it measures how decentralized a blockchain is by counting the minimum number of independent in entities required to disrupt or take control of the network. Well, according to this coefficient, yes.

Solana is decentralized. But from our perspective, it's not enough. It is not. Uh because for us it's imperative to be able to verify the chain, okay? And that means run your own nodes.

So, you see two different visions. One specialist and specializes nodes, one home nodes, home stakers. So, to maybe settle this, uh let me finish with with two thoughts. This is a quote from from Vitalik this Tuesday, actually. And if you have users that are verifying the chain, even 2/3 of the stakers acting together are not able to change the rules on people without everything breaking.

Ethereum rules can only change through a a hard fork that is agreed upon through wide community consensus. I think that says it all. And the last one is about uh what we said about uh the core purpose of the blockchain. When we talk about truly decentralization, that means any user can run their own node at home and not relying on a third party or service provider for verifying the chain. So, you don't have to depend on a third party.

That's all. So, my uh my last message is uh run your own nodes for you, for the network. And that's all. Thank you. Thank you very much, Diego.

Are there any questions for Diego? If not, have one. Okay, Diego. How How would you say like I I have I have been trying to run uh on Ethereum node on Aragon, but I have not been successful. Why do you think there there's so much struggle running Well, actually with our solutions today, we you need some uh technical skills.

This is uh yeah, this is a a low barrier uh that we are trying to uh to improve, but today, yeah, sometimes it's a little tricky. But, you know, you have other choices. You have a node, you have other uh other hardware that it's easy to stop and other tools that can uh be very useful. But, I I think that anyone that want to run a node uh it's fairly easy easy with with some tools. Definitely.

Anybody? Don't be afraid of the mic. Okay, if there are no more questions, we will resume here at 10:50. So, we have now have a 40-minute break. Just to remember you that.

So, thank you, Diego.