Running Bitcoin Node As a Full Node and Running Over Tor

Bitcoin and Lightning
1

I am a new Umbrel Home user and I’m not technical (hence my purchase of the plug and play device). I had no problem installing the Bitcoin Core node and getting it synched and it’s been running great.

However, I am running the node over Clearnet, typically with 11 peer connections. Someone told me it would be better to configure my router to open port 8333 so that other peers can find and connect to the node, as this would help the network and make my node a “full node.”

I sort of understand how to do this, but I haven’t done it yet. But before I do it, I was thinking it is better to run the Bitcoin node over Tor so that my IP address is not visible to outsiders. Is this a correct assumption, or maybe I’m not understanding what it means to run the node over Tor.

I see under the Bitcoin node settings to options that are toggled off. These are :

Connect to all Clearnet Peers over Tor:
Connect to peers available on the clearnet via Tor to preserve your anonymity at the cost of slightly less security.

Incoming Connections:
Broadcast your node to the Bitcoin network to help other nodes access the blockchain. You may need to set up port forwarding on your router to allow incoming connections from clearnet-only peers.

I don’t really understand these options. Should I enable them? If I do, will they actually work, or do I first need to install Tor on my PC or somehow get it running on my Umbrel Home? I tried to get ChatGPT to help me out and it said I need to connect to the bitcoin.conf file and do some sort of configuration for Tor, but I have no idea how to connect to the terminal to access this file. Do I really need to do that?

My apologies for asking these questions if these topics are already covered elsewhere. I just couldn’t find them and, again, I am not technically experienced in software or network configuration. Any help is appreciated.

2

No problem.
Yes, I would agree that if you’re not having any issues running your Bitcoin node that the best option is to keep using TOR as is (for exactly the reason you specify), which is how it is working right now.

FYI, to move your node to clearnet, you just need to enable ‘Incoming Connections’. The following thread is a good guide for getting set-up if you would like:

3

Thank you!