return to Archival Node

Traditionally, the participation in DIDO node networks to perform tasks is permissionless, requiring no outside authority from anyone or anything. Having permissionless access to a node network is one of the original guiding principles that is integral to the decentralized nature of DIDOs¹⁾.

Note: Unfortunately, there are drawbacks to this approach. Solutions involving a level of centralization for granting permission can provide benefits like increased speed because there is no need for the costly, time consuming consensus algorithms such as Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerant (dBFT), Proof of Authority (PoA) and others. However, centralized permissioned systems are vulnerable to malicious attacks such as denial of service, thereby undermining many of the “democratizing” aspects of the DIDO.

Networks making use of PoA networks define a fixed number of authority nodes. The number of nodes and associated PoA designation is voted on by the PoA community or defined by the development team. Authority nodes are similar to full nodes and can create and validate blocks. All other nodes in the node network run as lightweight nodes, depending on broadcasted data to participate in the blockchain.²⁾

Iota refers to authority nodes as permanodes (definition) because they keep all transaction data even after snapshots are made (concept introduced by Iota ³⁾)