On 25 December the Chinese bitcoin stock exchange BTCC donated and deployed all over the world 100 full bitcoin nodes that are supposed to help maintain the cryptocurrency network.

Bitcoin full nodes are important because they preserve information concerning all the transactions ever made in the system. Unlike full nodes, most of the bitcoin-involved computers run lightweight node programs, only keeping part of the transaction related data. “BTCC is the first bitcoin exchange and first mining pool to donate and deploy full bitcoin nodes for the maintenance of the bitcoin network,” writes the website of the stock exchange.

The number of full nodes has seen a 19% decrease in 2015. This is caused partly by the increasing amount of information full nodes have to process and partly by legal issues connected with bitcoin in some areas. Besides, no reward is provided for a full node maintenance. According to Bitnodes, the number of nodes reachable at the moment of publication is more than 5300. The actual figure is volatile because users switch their computers on and off. Most of the nodes are located in North America, Europe, Australia and China, the USA being the leader. “The nodes we deployed today will help to preserve the network as the number of full bitcoin nodes continues to decrease,” said Samson Mow, BTCC chief operating officer.

BTCC deployed the nodes in eight countries: 19% of the nodes in Germany; 19% in Singapore; 13% in China; 21% of the nodes in the United States; and 7% in each Australia, Brazil, Ireland and Japan. “We encourage other bitcoin companies to join us in contributing to the bitcoin ecosystem by sponsoring powerful full nodes,” said Bobby Lee, BTCC chief executive officer.

BTCC, originally founded as BTCChina in 2011, is one of the major bitcoin exchanges in the world. It offers its customers digital currency exchange, a mining pool, payment processing, consumer wallets, and blockchain engraving.

Andrew Levich