Quote from: gmaxwell on February 08, 2016, 10:07:26 PM

Quote from: blunderer on February 08, 2016, 08:37:04 PM

Not a word in that link re. "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners""
Sill waiting, still confused.

They simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the rules of the protocol (and ban the peer(s) that sent them). If the block isn't valid it does not exist any more than a litecoin or a namecoin block exists to the Bitcoin network.

Yes, "A" nodes ignore etc. blocks they consider invalid (such as "B"), "B" nodes ignore blocks they consider invalid (such as "A"). As long as there is at least one of each (there is, non-SPV miners are also full nodes), everything's happening.

Explain "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners" plz.

@BitUsher: feel free to field this, I'm genuinely interested.

*Also explain this bit in the Bitcoin wiki:

Quote from: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Full_node

Some are incentivizing it.

Bitnodes is incentivizing full node operators "until the end of 2015 or until 10,000 nodes are running."[2] For rules and how to join the incentives program, visit Bitnodes Incentive Program.

Finally, if nodes are essential to Bitcoin security & are quite cheap to implement, what's preventing a malefactor from breaking Bitcoin by throwing up a bunch of misbehaving nodes (which "simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the [new] rules of the protocol (and ban the [old rule] peer(s) that sent them)."?