Running Ethereum Node In Africa

Devcon 7 · 14 Nov 2024 · 10:12

David Uzochukwu shares the practical realities of running an Ethereum node in Africa at Devcon, as the talk's title states, covering connectivity, hardware, and cost considerations. Reliable internet and power access vary widely across the continent, a general infrastructure challenge for node operators anywhere it applies.

Speakers

Topics

From Devcon 7, hosted by Ethereum Foundation.

Transcript

[Music] [Music] hi okay um okay I want to start by asking a question um who how many of us want to be here um in the next let's say 10 years 20 years to see um that etherum has gotten to um the great potential it should be how many of us okay good awesome so I think

we are all in one Spirit um I'm David um I'm David uku from Nigeria and um I'm here to really SP our hearts to see how we all come together to make ethereum truly caliz right and I'll be talking on um from my own perspective as a participant and as a user and someone who who believes in the future of the ATM network um what I'm trying to do and how I'm doing it um so I live in AFC in Nigeria Africa and um Africa has some few unique challenges

and um it has a lot of potentials so today I'll be talking about running node in Africa and um other few things um so yeah why geographical Geographic decentralization um vital um sorry why Geographic decentralization is vital for the for for the ethereum um if AUM has to move like if Crum has to be truly decentralized it means we need to have uh these notes the inform infrastructure points right um distributed right and it has to be

distributed from a geographical perspective so in currently right now in the world we have like seven continents right and Africa is one of it right um and just to also add I believe in one day um that some of us one day possible me or you might go to uh might go to anartica to actually run a n um right now in Africa we have less than 1% of nde operators um in Africa but in other part of the world um we have more than 30% um in other part of in other side part of the world and that's not true decentralization true decentralization is where we have a good balance to these

um infrastructures right running together um the interesting thing about um AUM vision is um it has a vision of security trust resilience but all of this can happen if we don't have true decentralization because one if we have an imbalance right it means the majority will actually give um have um High um rules or policies which might not favor the rest so we all have to be like we it has to really be iiz for us to really have um this Vision come to pass um geographical diversity is also um one thing um one of the vision um or core

visions of the ethereum um um Network itself right seeing ethereum really really being decentralized is what uh um the network needs so um this is just a map showing us like uh the the the notes we have in in um globally just like I said we have less than 1% of notes in in in Africa and also Latin America so these two these two continents kind of have similar unique challenges so I'll be talking on some of these challenges also um one question also I want to want

to or another thing I will be talking about is Why will why are we why should we also um think about um or supporting Africa in trying to run notes right because of the potentials um at the moment in Africa we have about um approximately about 1.7 billion um um people right and majority of this um a good number of this um of this number is um they are all youth right um and one thing I love saying is in Africa we have a lot of challenges right um where there is challenges that's where talk about finding solutions to solve these challenges and one great solution right now it's the ethereum network it's the

etherum blockchain which solve challenges we face in Africa so that tells that there's a great potential in Africa and that's why also we want to see more noes run running in Africa building a decentralized future um our work at NB so um in trying to solve this issue of true decentralization from my own standpoint um I came up with a community called node Bridge right the idea right now is just to see how we kind of have more home node operators right sport people's mind to also be participant of this network in a way to really make this eum

truly decentralized right um some few challenges we have in Africa is um education um lack of um internet infrastructures um lack of um um Power infrastructures economical issue right so and you know in my own small way right we one of the things we try to do at nodeb is to also break this barrier right and um we find a way to also break this barrier by for instance doing workshops right I've been doing a lot of workshops around um so in some few African countries also educating

them finding a better ways to actually um tell them that yes we all have to be part of this network making this network resilient again um and then also um Power so because we have to find a way to also like use a very small um um system so as it's sustainable and it's actually also solve the problem so this is just like a Raspberry Pi running an AUM node on arm um which also um solves that problem right so I also like custom build all of these things so as to solve the problem for um for an African person who is not able to actually buy this infrastructure um who is not able to buy this infrastructure because setting up this infrastructure is quite um

expensive um yeah this is some of the workshops also um we kind of get to do um yeah this is also some of the setups we've seen more Africans running these notes right so uh um they kind of have different setups so actually at the moment we also kind of use styling we use um um Power solar systems to generate um um Power for sustainability um and also with the custom nodes we put together um Oho yeah this is like the whole power power system The Styling um some of the the node operators we have at the moment are actually using um also education

um so why security depends on global node operators and solo sckers all right so just like I said we all have to come together right to really see to push um ethereum to be truly decentralized um and then the point here is um Africa is in in Africa is trying to solve its own problem but because we're trying to solve a global problem which is trying to solve decentralization we all have to be like all of us have to all come together like so helping each other for instance um there are different system right now like the DVT system um okay so like the DVT system which actually you could also

delegate through permissionless system you could actually have like a cluster to delegate also um um um your Stakes to a particular um node that is sitting in in in under represented location right so we all have to come together to actually do these things together because it's it depends on us all not just um one geographical point but it all depends on everybody who loves this network and who is ready actually to see this network in the next 50 years to come um yeah how you could also support like there are different ways also you could also put um this support just like

I said um supporting node operators from your own point of view um let's say it might be be delegating your notes it might you it might so it might be you delegating your Stakes it might be you um um setting up some um resources which is for education and it's like so um I also do quickly ask what does true dis calization uh mean to you and we can think about it in the next session I'm sorry David but the time is up and we have a really tight schedule if you want to talk to David I think the work he's doing is absolutely amazing definitely connect with him and then