Bitcoin (BTC) vs Bitcoin Cash (BCH) - Who is the real Bitcoin? # Part2

By Roberto D. | CryptoFarm | 3 Mar 2020

Today I would like to talk to you about an extremely controversial concept, the bitcoin node.

Let's start this time from what the two opposing factions say about bitcoin nodes.

What does Bitcoin Core (BTC) says about nodes?

BTC developers and supporters talk about 3 types of bitcoin nodes

Mining knot
Full node
SPV node

The Mining Node is a node that participates in the creation of transaction blocks by solving a mathematical problem faster than the other Mining nodes to receive the compensation in bitcoin.

The Mining Node contains all the blockchain from the Genesis block up to block X which was calculated while working on solving the block X + 1

The Full Node is the same as the Mining node but does not participate in the creation of new blocks.
That is, it does not undermine but receives future blocks from the Mining Knots.

BTC supporters are very explicit when they say that every user who uses bitcoin must have a Full Node with the whole blockchain.
Many core extremists often repeat "if you don't use a Full Node you don't use bitcoin".

SPV node. First of all SPV stands for Simplified Payment Verification or Simplified Payment Verification.

As you have probably guessed this is a lighter type node that does not contain the entire blockchain but contains only 2 elements, the block headers and the merkle root.

Through headers and merkle roots, SPV nodes can connect to a number of Full or Mining Nodes and obtain transaction checks on request.
Obviously an SPV node takes care of verifying its own transactions and not all those of the rest of the world.
SPV is the most common model used by wallets that many of us users use.

What does Bitcoin Cash (BCH) says about knots?

BCH developers and supporters talk about 2 types of bitcoin nodes.

Full node
SPV node

The definitions are not the same as above. In fact, Bitcoin Cash uses for Full Nodes the definition that Bitcoin Core uses for Mining Node.

Warning, why doesn't BCH have Mining Nodes?

BCH supporters believe that all in Nodes that are not SPVs are Mining nodes and are called Full Nodes.
They claim that if a node is not an SPV and does not undermine it is completely useless by doing nothing to improve the security of the system and indeed slows down the network itself.

Let's see what "the creator" says in the Whitepaper, reading it from end to end, we find two types of knots:

Full node
SPV node

Satoshi (BTC Creator) when he spoke of Nodes Full he spoke of nodes that did mining, he had never defined the concept of a non-SPV node that does not undermine.

This concept seems to have been introduced by bitcoin core developers, not by Satoshi.
Now if we go further, we see that to use the Lightning Network each customer must have a node that contains the full blockchain but that does not necessarily have to undermine.

At first glance, we would seem to understand that bitcoin core developers have added their concept of Full Node (different from the one defined by Satoshi) so that they could create the conditions to make the Lightning Network work.

Summarizing Bitcoin Cash uses the same definition of Nodes that Satoshi had left us in writing, while Bitcoin Core added a type of node useless for security and detrimental to the performance of the network.

I feel like giving Bitcoin Cash a nice point today.

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