"Mining Nodes" vs "Listening Nodes"

Question

- Is it possible to run a Multichain node without forcing its CPU to mine? I read the parameters and couldn't find anything about it. Seems like something I'll have to edit myself?

- I'm not entirely sure how Bitcoin Mining work nowadays (will do a little more research on that tomorrow) but I suppose that there's a special software highly optimized that talks to specialized devices (ASICs, FGPAs, GPUs). Assuming a same hash algorithm, it would be possible to use them with Multichain, right? Do you know of any advance on that front?

Answer 1

Hi,

1- Every BlockChain needs, at least, one "processer" which can be a miner. The processers create and validate blocks (make transactions confirmed). But Multichain is a permissionned BlockChain, then you can create different nodes in giving "mining" right to only one node. Thus, only one node will process the BlockChain.

2- Except if you take the open source code and modify by yourself, I've no know about chossing a different algorithm. But, keep in mind that, MultiChain mining uses low processing. It's a permissionned BlockChain. The processing is adapted to this "permissionned spirit". You can easily create new blocks in less than 15 seconds. And parameters allow you to define the number of empty blocks before to do a pause waiting for new transactions.

Comments

> But Multichain is a permissionned BlockChain

I keep reading that but it's not necessarily this way, is it? I could have "anyone-can-mine: true" and remove any "admin privileges" and we would have a permissionless blockchain.

In a scenario where we have 200+ mining nodes, one might want to run a node without "wasting" his CPU.

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Hi,
not sure to understand.
You want every node be mineed but you want (a part of ?) nodes not waste CPU in mining.
Why can't a node ask something like "please, revoke my mining right" ? Then, this node won't waste its CPU anymore.

In my point of view, the waste is very light with Multichain comparing to most of other blockchains.
As the main idea behind blockchain is a decentralization process, the process is then shared on "mining" nodes (where all the process was centralized/concentrated on the database server for database systems).

And anyway, you can propose node to be not miner and, more than that, you can create by yourself lightweight nodes (SPV).