Nodes

Your own node verifies every transaction and every block against the consensus rules itself — you no longer have to trust a third-party server about what's on your addresses: "Don't trust, verify". Your wallet then queries balances from your own hardware instead of from providers who could log addresses and IPs. On top of that, every node strengthens the network's decentralization. You don't earn money with it — nodes receive no block reward, only miners do. The return is sovereignty and privacy.

There are no fees or subscriptions — what remains is electricity: a mini server like the Start9 Server One draws roughly 10–25 watts in continuous operation, about the same as a router; a measured Server Pure came in at around 100 kWh per year. On the network side, expect around 20 GB of download per month after the initial sync; upload can be considerably higher depending on settings, but can be capped in Bitcoin Core. A normal home connection is perfectly sufficient.

On first start the node downloads and verifies the entire blockchain — currently over 700 GB. On modern NVMe hardware like the Start9 servers this typically takes one to two days, depending on your connection and peers. The server handles it completely on its own; there is nothing to do but wait, and you can already use the device in the meantime.

No. Our Start9 servers ship with StartOS preinstalled — an open-source server operating system with a graphical interface in your browser. You install services like apps with one click from the marketplace, and updates for the system and services arrive the same way. Linux runs under the hood, but you never touch it; according to the manufacturer, the basics take about an hour to learn. No account, no cloud — everything runs locally at your place.

You install an Electrum server such as electrs from the marketplace — after that, wallets like Sparrow, Electrum, Nunchuk, BlueWallet, the BitBoxApp or Trezor Suite connect directly to your node, on your home network or remotely via Tor. Your hardware wallet signs as usual; only the balance queries now go through your own server instead of someone else's. Sparrow and Specter can alternatively connect straight to Bitcoin Core via RPC.

The blockchain is currently over 700 GB and grows by roughly 80–90 GB per year. Add the Electrum server's index, which requires a complete, unpruned node for the wallet connection — a space-saving pruned node won't do for that job. With the operating system and additional services, 1 TB would already be tight today; 2 TB gives you several years of headroom, and 4 TB adds space for Nextcloud data and backups. 16 GB of RAM covers the node plus several services, 32 or 64 GB many parallel applications.

The StartOS marketplace offers over 50 services. On the Bitcoin side: Lightning (LND or Core Lightning) with interfaces like Ride The Lightning, plus Mempool as your own block explorer and BTCPay Server for accepting payments. Beyond that, the device replaces cloud subscriptions: Nextcloud for files and calendars, Vaultwarden as a password manager, Matrix for messaging. From 16 GB of RAM upwards, several of these services realistically run alongside the Bitcoin node — for Lightning, plan for more of a learning curve and keep the device running around the clock.