April 21, 2026 ·
Today I am winding down my last Ethereum validator, at least for now, and it's a reflective moment for me. I go over my motivations for getting into the activity here, discussing details of me first running a blockchain node in 2017. In some sense looking back at it from 2026, 2017 feels quite recent, while within crypto it feels ancient, as if I've been around forever. When I first got into it I didn't how to code, didn't have much idea of the why, or fully grasp what the point was. Those curiosities forever remain and have only increased, but I now find I have sufficient experience and explanations needed to run any and every kind of digital infrastructure, conventional servers, blockchains, or otherwise.
What I liked about this running-validators business most is the ability to hold and transfer wealth locally without depending on a centralized ledger to keep an account. Battle of Garigliano from the year 1503 pictured above for effect, I like to think that the ability to hold one's wealth locally and have the ability to transfer it without physically carrying around gold is truly amazing. Inb4 Peter Schiff argues gold can do that, too, if you tokenize it on a database and so on. Yes, yes, yes. More debate some other time.
The difference between a node and a validator is what's at stake for a network participant to lose. The act of running a node is that of participation in a peer-to-peer network, something that was exciting for me ever since I first used computers as a teenager. Eventually and years later came along miners, the technology Bitcoin still uses to run its proof-of-work consensus mechanism, where single-purpose-computers run algorithms like SHA-256 to burn electricity and potentially gain tokens as incentive to participate and protect the network. Ethereum meanwhile switched to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in September of 2022, which meant participating nodes did not burn electricity as proof-of-work; more than it takes to run a computer or server. Rather, each node wanting to participate in the validation of the network provided financial stake they were willing to lose for breaking the rules or going against the network. Fancy explanation for a simple profound shift in network dynamics.
Had I started blogging sooner I would have probably went harder down a path of discussing the merits of and differences between gold, BTC, and ETH, among other discussions, but I find those arguments silly in today's context. At least now in 2026, I'm not here to debate crypto ideology, not for this particular purpose of tinkering anyway. The point for today's post is that I've run BTC and ETH nodes for years, and I am winding that down for a bit now. I am moving this summer among other reasons why, but even without that trigger, I have been wanting to really, actually see if the act of exiting the system is as doable as it sounds in these networks. Exiting is important, and a big idea behind these networks is that one should be free to exit. I personally believe that exiting should be much more relaxed than the requirements to enter and participate in a network; which seems to be the case.
Good experience. 441314, signing out.
Cursory price of Ethereum today: $2,328 USD/ETH
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