BTCC, the leading bitcoin mining and exchange platform decided to play Santa this Christmas. The company, previously known as BTCChina has reportedly contributed over 100 full nodes to the entire bitcoin network across the world. These full nodes are distributed across the world (5 continents) and they will continue supporting the bitcoin network.  

This donation comes at the right time for Bitcoin as the network has been facing a steady decline in the number of nodes. Unlike mining, not many are interested in hosting a bitcoin node as it doesn’t pay. While bitcoin mining pays rewards to miners, hosting bitcoin nodes doesn’t. But, these very nodes are responsible for verifying transactions and integrity of the network. The bitcoin full nodes store and serve entire copies of the blockchain to the network. The number of nodes are directly proportional to the degree of decentralization of the bitcoin platform. The steady decrease in the number of bitcoin full nodes over a full year already had bitcoin on the path towards centralization. 

Out of the hundred bitcoin full nodes donated by BTCC, 10 of them are DNS seed nodes with unrestricted network access. Unlike bitcoin full nodes, DNS seed nodes allows other clients to connect to specific connections on the network. These DNS seed nodes can be used by anyone to connect to the bitcoin network and set up their own nodes after synchronizing their setup with the running bitcoin full nodes. BTCC’s seed node can be accessed by connecting to seed.btcc.com:8333.  
 
According to the company executives, BTCC is very much interested in supporting the development of applications as well as core development. The bitcoin full nodes contributed by the company are distributed across the world, with a majority of them concentrated in the United States. Rest of them are scattered in places with lesser bitcoin traction. The United States plays host for about 21 percent of all the nodes contributed recently by the company. It is followed by Germany and Singapore with 19 percent each, China at 13 percent and the likes of Australia, Brazil, Ireland and Japan with 7 percent each.  
 
BTCC’s active involvement in the maintenance and improvement of the Bitcoin network and currency is appreciated very much. The CEO of BTCC, Bobby Lee also urges others to follow suit and contribute to the network. 

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