Within the bitcoiner ecosystem, the role of the nodes for the network is extremely significant, since they form the security and validation structure of the blockchain. However, there are elements that play against its expansion, -price, difficult access, among others-. Therefore, an American engineer created one that can be more attractive, as much for its functionality, as for the low cost of its production and even its esthetics.
This is Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. created by Matthew Zipkin. The sound engineer has developed affordable hardware to house a complete node of Bitcoin, where the blocks and their addition to the chain are shown as LED lights as a clock. Recall that the complete nodes are extremely important, as they are responsible for validating transactions in the Bitcoin blockchain. And the more complete nodes exist, the more decentralized and protected the network will be.
The first version of the Bitcoin Block Clock was displayed during the "Art Trial" event in May last year, and included several interesting details, such as a screen showing real-time information about the network. After receiving good feedback and comments on Reddit from the community, he decided to launch a 'Junior' version of the hardware, which would be simpler and cheaper but equally artistic. The original version was put up for sale by Zipkin on OpenBazaar and Purse.io, but has not been sold. "The price is quite high because it's art and I love it and I think I want to keep it ... Of course, it has not yet been sold," said Zipkin.
For the Jr. version, Zipkin returned to Raspberry Pi Zero - which should be the cheapest computer in the world - and Bcoin, an implementation of the protocol Bitcoin written in Node.js., as explained, Bcoin is very easy to install And use, since the code base is in Javascript. The engineer used a reduced Bcoin complete node, trying to limit the system resources to which the node needs to operate in Raspberry Pi Zero.