Any investor worth his salt, when you decide to buy a criptomoneda takes into account many variables, among them safety. Today we will analyze a very important factor from the point of view of the security of a criptomoneda: the number of nodes.
If you continue reading you will be amazed and perhaps change your opinion with respect to certain of cryptocurrencies. We will give you a first-hand information that has no comparison.
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Curiosities of nodes with respect to cryptocurrencies
What criptomoneda has more nodes? In the first places have always been Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the first is Horizen (ZEN) that to date of today it has 35.900 nodes.What cryptocurrencies have less nodes? Monacoin at the end of 2019 had 11 nodes, but the most would be Verge for being more well-known than with 16 nodes is in the posts more low.Is there any criptomoneda that do not publish their nodes? Yes, it is. Cryptocurrencies as Cardano, Monero, Ethereum Classic or Decred apparently do not publish their number of nodes while maintaining the privacy of those that break through.What is a user agent, and because it is important for the security of the nodes? Is the user agent sent with every request to the server and that displays information on the system used. From the point of safety is important because you can know which version of the systems used. For example, the user agent main of Bitcoin is the Sathosi 0.19.1 taking into account that the larger version is 0.20 means an update to the system that ensures greater safety.Is it dangerous that there are few nodes? Yes. The fewer nodes it is easier to create nodes, false to gain control of the criptomoneda (known as attack Sybil). It is also easier to suffer an attack of 51%.What are important nodes from the point of view of security? Yes. The higher the number, the greater integrity and security for the whole network. As a curious fact, in case you have not thought, if all the nodes of a criptomoneda reside in the same country and went to war surely your criptomoneda would be in danger, while with Bitcoin would continue having nodes, as it is present in all the world.
Nodes of Bitcoin, are on the rise
Our journey continues and makes its first stop in the information that we have from the hands of the web site bitnodes.io. Here we can see that today the network Bitcoin has 10558 nodes. The USA and Germany have hoarded a large amount of them exceeded only by the nodes of unknown origin (with the IPs obscured).
We can see in the graphs that despite the last halving it maintains an acceptable amount of nodes, having increased in a 6,50% during the last 730 days if we see the graph of the last 2 years.
Bitcoin has different node types. There are so-called nodes complete that they provide security and integrity to the network, give confidence, the more you have the better. With a computer is moderately powerful you can install such type of nodes.
Are not the same as the nodes of the miners that provide rewards for which you have to make a major investment in hardware. Then we have the Supernodes or nodes listen to only provide information to those who connect with them.
Map of nodes to Bitcoin at the global level. Source: Bitnodes.io
The cryptocurrencies with few nodes more thoroughly
When we decided to add to our portfolio a new criptomoneda, the first question that we must ask is: how many nodes is your blockchain?.
Mcafee conducted a dossier on the attacks to the blockchain, and he talks about the danger of the low number of nodes. When someone gets control of 51% of the nodes of a network blockchain can process blocks faster than the rest and create their own chains at will which means that control of the ledger and can therefore manipulate it and create double spending with which to take over the cryptocurrencies third party.
According to the report, an attack on the 51% has never happened before against Bitcoin, but if that has happened with Verge and other cryptocurrencies.
Now the question is, can you get the day that a seizure will occur at 51% with Bitcoin? Because if someone takes control of 51% of nodes to your will could make it or if you lower the number of nodes.
Remember that in Bitcoin there are several types of nodes, some of them are for mining that require a special software and others are installed with ease by any user who wants to contribute to make stronger the blockchain of Bitcoin, that is why it is very important take a control of the amount of nodes that exist.
Nodes infected virus: ransomware
The report from Mcafee also speaks to us of a kind of ransomware (system hijacker) to the blockchain of Ethereum. This ramsomware called Planetary has the goal of infecting the nodes of the blockchain and ask for a ransom.
From my point of view this would be dangerous if it is combined an attack infecting nodes, which would force them to reduce the amount of nodes with an attack to 51% to gain control.
As the report says, when a criptomoneda has few nodes, imagine 10 nodes for example, someone can create 11 nodes (nothing difficult) and take control. The community Bitcoin is still working to improve every day more the security.
This content comes to us courtesy of Deckcard23. For more information you can follow him on his Twitter.