What is the difference between full node and partial node

Question

I am not understanding why we need different types of nodes in the blockchain and what is their functionality.

Answer 1

There are two types of nodes in Blockchain:

1.Full node

2. Partial node

Full node

• The Full nodes have to store complete Blockchain Ledger locally, means they need to download every block and transaction that ever happened on the Blockchain.
• By running a full node we can use bitcoin in a trustless way. You will know that all the rules of bitcoin are followed, for example: that no coins were spent twice and all the rules needed to make the syntax work for example (difficulty) are followed.
• Full nodes are the secure way to use bitcoins without any attack.

Partial node

• Partial nodes are also called lightweight nodes. They do not store complete ledger.
• They only download the part of the blockchain which they require using SPV(Simplified Payment Verification) mode.
• The SPV is a technique to verify that transaction is included in the bitcoin blockchain, instead of downloading entire block they will download only block header which is much smaller than full blocks.
• The partial block verifies by sending the request to proof of inclusion in the form of Merkle branch.
• They will connect to full nodes clients and use bloom filters to ensure that they only receive transactions which are necessary and relevant to their operations.

Answer 2

We need different types of nodes to differentiate the working of blockchain, each node has it's own function and helps in maintaining the blockchain. We simply can't do everything with just one node because it will make the blockchain more complex. In blockchain there are two types of nodes:(A)Full Node, (B)Partial Node.

Comments

Hi @Sourav

Thanks for the explanation. Can you also simply explain the difference between Partial node and Full node? Thanks!