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In the field of cryptocurrency, miners and full nodes are two crucial entities that play important roles in maintaining the integrity, security, and functionality of blockchain networks. Although many people often confuse the two, their functions have significant differences, so understanding these distinctions is crucial for a deep understanding of the cryptocurrency world.
What is a Miner?
In the cryptocurrency field, miners can be compared to gold diggers in the real world. They sift through vast terrain to find extremely rare and valuable nuggets. Similarly, miners obtain the right to mine by proof of work, adding new blocks to the blockchain and receiving a substantial reward. Miners play a critical role in the blockchain network, as they are responsible for verifying new transactions and recording them on the global distributed ledger, also known as the blockchain. It should be emphasized that miners are a type of full node, meaning that they validate all the rules of the blockchain and only accept blocks that comply with these rules.
The mining process involves transaction verification, block creation, and generating proof of work. Successfully generating proof of work means finding a hash output (also known as a hash result) that meets the specified conditions set by the protocol.
The following are simplified steps for miners to generate proof of work:
1. Transaction verification: Miners select transactions from the memory pool (a collection of unconfirmed transactions) and verify their validity.
2. Block creation: Verified transactions are combined with the hash value of the previous block and a new random number to construct a candidate block.
3. Hash processing: The candidate block undergoes hash processing using SHA-256 or other commonly used hash algorithms, generating a fixed-length string representation of a hash value.
4. Difficulty check: The generated hash value is compared to the current mining difficulty target set by the protocol. If it is lower than the target value, a new block is successfully mined. If it is not lower than the target value, the miner changes the random number and repeats the hash processing until a hash value that meets the target is found. To do this, miners use mining hardware or specialized ASIC miners capable of performing trillions of hash calculations per second, aiming to find the desired hash value as quickly as possible.
5. Block submission: Once a valid hash value is found, the miner submits the new block to the network. Other nodes verify the block, and upon successful validation, add it to the blockchain. The miner who submitted the block receives a certain amount of cryptocurrency reward. Finding a valid hash value requires a significant amount of “work” (demanding substantial computational power and energy consumption). This work can be verified by anyone at any time, hence the term “proof of work”.
One of the biggest misconceptions about mining is that it is an easy way to earn cryptocurrency. In reality, the process is resource-intensive, requiring advanced hardware, technical knowledge, and a significant amount of electricity. Additionally, competition among miners is fierce, constantly squeezing profit margins.
What is a Full Node?
While all miners are full nodes, not all full nodes are miners. Miners are the producers of blocks, while full nodes act as librarians for the blockchain network. Full nodes maintain a complete copy of the blockchain, ensuring that every transaction complies with the network rules. They validate the legitimacy of transactions and blocks, rejecting those that violate the rules. Non-mining full nodes do not create new blocks, but they play a crucial role in maintaining network integrity by inspecting the work of miners and ensuring compliance with network consensus rules.
Although full nodes play a crucial role, they are often misunderstood. Many people believe that running a full node requires rewards, similar to mining. However, unlike miners, the work of full node operators does not directly receive compensation. They contribute significantly to maintaining network decentralization and security, with their contributions largely selfless.
Some also believe that full nodes are powerless participants in the network. Miners produce blocks (which are costly), while full nodes constitute a large army of supporters of the blockchain, having the authority to enforce network consensus rules. A mining alliance with more than 51% of the network’s total computing power can choose to produce blocks that disrupt the network consensus rules. However, the risk for them is that the stakeholders of the blockchain would essentially reject these blocks, depriving those miners of any rewards.
The balance between miners and non-mining full nodes is also crucial. A network dominated by miners may become centralized, undermining the decentralized nature of blockchain technology. Conversely, a network with too few miners may compromise security, as it becomes more susceptible to a 51% attack, where a single entity or alliance controls a majority of the mining power and can maliciously manipulate the blockchain.
Conclusion
In summary, understanding the differences between miners and full nodes is crucial for anyone involved in the cryptocurrency world. While they play different roles, both are indispensable for the operation, security, and integrity of blockchain networks. Miners add new transactions to the blockchain through their powerful computing power, while full nodes maintain network integrity by validating these transactions, ensuring the smooth operation of the blockchain network.
