A free public service · watch Bitcoin decide.
What rules will your node enforce?
A node does not ask permission. It checks. The software you run defines the rules your node will accept. Miners spend work extending histories; your node decides whether those histories are valid.
Bitcoin has a chain of blocks and a chain of reasoning about which blocks count. Software turns the second into rules a node can enforce. The conversation comes first. The blocks record the result.
Watch this node speak Bitcoin to its peers. Then inspect the clients public nodes report running.
Which clients are public Bitcoin nodes reporting over time? The census includes listening and non-listening nodes: Core 30.x, Knots not yet signaling BIP-110 / RDTS, and Knots already signaling. Watch the middle line fall as gold rises.