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@ Lyn Alden
2025-04-30 11:39:27
Node runners check miners’ work to make sure it meets the consensus rules of the software they voluntarily run, and then store it if it does. Mining is more expensive than node running, and is usually done for profit whereas node running is usually done to facilitate some other service (running an exchange or handling one’s own transactions).
That could include other people’s transactions, or other arbitrary data, which has existed back to the genesis block.
And some data is prunable. Ideally arbitrary data should be in prunable areas rather than unprunable areas that bloat the UTXO set.
The block size limit keeps overall bandwidth and storage requirements in check. A node runner can’t know ahead of time how full blocks will be, but they’re basically signing up for a maximum limit of 4MB every 10 mins.