What is a node?
A computer running blockchain software that stores the ledger, validates transactions and relays them to other computers on the network.
Nodes are what a blockchain actually is in practice. A full node downloads and independently verifies every block against the rules, so it never has to trust anyone else’s claim about the state of the ledger. Light clients trust others for convenience.
Why it matters: the number of independently operated nodes, and how cheap they are to run, determines how hard the network is to capture. If verifying requires expensive hardware, fewer people do it, and the network drifts toward trusting a handful of operators. That is a live argument in the design of high-throughput chains — see Solana.
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