Since nodes are just as important to decentralizing bitcoin as miners are, shouldn't we find a way to incentivize running them?

More philosophically, the bitcoin blockchain is a precious global shared public resource with huge externalized costs that fall to all future users; it's good stewardship to not cram things that don't need to be in it, into it regardless of what the limits are.

-gmaxwell

Those externalized costs fall onto the nodes. The more I think about it, the more I realize that so much of this scaling argument is about people ignoring the costs to nodes. Nodes are completely charity based. People incur the costs of running a node with hardly any benefit to themselves. Yes there are a few very minor benefits (mostly if you run a business or store), but they are certainly outweighed by the cost and frustration of maintaining a working node at all times.

If we want this thing to stay censorship resistant, if we want governments to see attacking the network as futile, wouldn't it be smart to find a way to incentivize nodes?

Not that such a task is easy or that it wouldn't require real change to the protocol, likely a HF even. But are there any proposals or ideas on how this might be done?

Submitted November 29, 2016 at 03:41AM by Cryptoconomy http://bit.ly/2gBCoP4