fistchain is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency with a strong focus on community
input, open governance, and sustainable funding for development. It utilizes a
hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mining system to ensure that a small
group cannot dominate the flow of transactions or make changes to fistchain without
the input of the community. A unit of the currency is called a fistchain (FIST).
fistd is a full node implementation of fistchain written in Go (golang).
It acts as a fully-validating chain daemon for the fistchain cryptocurrency. fistd maintains the entire past transactional ledger of fistchain and allows relaying of transactions to other fistchain nodes around the world.
This software is currently under active development. It is extremely stable and has been in production use since May 2018.
The software was originally forked from btcd, which is a bitcoin full node implementation that is still under active development. To gain the benefit of btcd's ongoing upgrades, including improved peer and connection handling, database optimization, and other blockchain related technology improvements, fistd is continuously synced with the btcd codebase.
The term 'full node' is short for 'fully-validating node' and refers to software that fully validates all transactions and blocks, as opposed to trusting a 3rd party. In addition to validating transactions and blocks, nearly all full nodes also participate in relaying transactions and blocks to other full nodes around the world, thus forming the peer-to-peer network that is the backbone of the fistchain cryptocurrency.
The full node distinction is important, since full nodes are not the only type of software participating in the fistchain peer network. For instance, there are 'lightweight nodes' which rely on full nodes to serve the transactions, blocks, and cryptographic proofs they require to function, as well as relay their transactions to the rest of the global network.
As described in the previous section, the fistchain cryptocurrency relies on having a peer-to-peer network of nodes that fully validate all transactions and blocks and then relay them to other full nodes.
Running a full node with fistd contributes to the overall security of the network, increases the available paths for transactions and blocks to relay, and helps ensure there are an adequate number of nodes available to serve lightweight clients, such as Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) wallets.
Without enough full nodes, the network could be unable to expediently serve users of lightweight clients which could force them to have to rely on centralized services that significantly reduce privacy and are vulnerable to censorship.
In terms of individual benefits, since fistd fully validates every block and transaction, it provides the highest security and privacy possible when used in conjunction with a wallet that also supports directly connecting to it in full validation mode, such as fistwallet (CLI) and fistchainiton (GUI).