𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐳𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐧𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞. i've wanted to run one for ages. i've started the process more than once, only to give up for the same reasons: storage and how ridiculously long it took to sync. when @ZakuraZcash was released on Wednesday, i got so excited cos this meant i could finally run my own Zcash node on my laptop. Zakura is a new @Zcash full node built to remove a lot of that friction. if you're new here, a node is a program you install on your computer that connects directly to the a blockchain network. it verifies transactions, keeps an up-to-date copy of the blockchain, and helps keep the network secure. it's not been easy running a Zcash node. you had to download and store the blockchain's entire history, then wait days before your node was fully synced and ready to use. now Zakura lets you run a pruned node. a pruned node allows your computer to verify the blockchain without having to keep all the old data after it has been verified. it removes the parts it no longer needs and keeps only what's necessary to continue verifying new blocks. that's what brings the storage requirement down so dramatically. Zakura also provides a recent snapshot of the blockchain that's only about 11gb to download. instead of syncing everything from the very first block, you can start from that recent snapshot and only download what has happened since then. that makes getting started much faster and far less demanding on your computer. for someone with a 500gb laptop who's been wanting to run a node for a long time, that's a pretty big deal. but this goes beyond my laptop. the easier it is to run a node, the more people can participate in securing the network. that's a win for decentralization and makes the zcash network even stronger. credit to the teams at @ValarGroup and @TachyonZcash for making this possible. i'll definitely be spinning up a zakura node soon. i'll share my experience here.