Importance of hosting nodes

1. Authoritarian governments can attempt to shut down the network because it is not impossible to shut down the internet access of a small number of node operators
2. Attackers can attempt to crash the network by DDoSing the servers which is not impossible due to the low amount
3. Nodes can stop broadcasting certain transactions. If a very big part of them do it, the transactions risk not reaching the miners

If you have the ability to host a node, please do so. Most importantly, do not forget to port-forward it to become accessible for incoming connections.

The difference between reachable (port-forwarded, usually 9030) and other nodes are that when new nodes are joining the network, they can only connect to nodes that are reachable. There are currently 118 reachable nodes on the network.

How to host a node

The best and easiest way to run a node is to use the Satergo wallet which has built-in tooling for downloading, monitoring and keeping your node up to date.

If you are hosting a node, and it does not show up it could be because the node detects the wrong IP. So your node is actually found but with an invalid IP which makes you not recognize it. To fix this, set the public address of your node (easily done from Satergo or the config file).