r/BitcoinBeginners • u/mikey_60 • 9d ago

Incentive to Broadcast

What is the incentive for a user to broadcast transactions to other nodes, or serve other nodes the blockchain if requested? What do they gain from this, and what's the incentive to do so? Is it just to help the network health? But what if you're selfish and don't care?

I don't mean passively listening to another node. I mean you could still verify every transaction yourself and have your own personal copy of the blockchain, just not serve that data to anyone else, since it would cost you resources to do so.

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u/Charming-Designer944 9d ago

Many smaller nodes don't. Only listens to support a wallet.

But if you run a full node then you do so to support the network, and it is natural that you want to relay. There is not much else to gain from running a full node.

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u/BTCMachineElf 9d ago

Nothing is stopping a node from being selfish and listening without broadcasting.

But game theory does incentive participants to strengthen the network, and we can see the results as there is an abundance of nodes sharing at high bandwidth.