And don't confuse users (people exchanging coins for value in the market) with nodes again...
^ this.
nodes are simply relays, they don't have much power.
users have economic power, which trumps everything.
In the event of a split, nodes won't be the factor because if there is any ambiguity, SPV will check some reference block, and
users will stay on the chain they want to stay on.
Indeed, franky1 is AGAIN confusing both.
Of course, users
use nodes. But users market weight is not proportional to the NUMBER OF NODES.
A big exchange has one single node, but has a bloody heavy market weight. I'm running a node too, and my market weight is essentially zero. The 5 times a year I buy something with bitcoin is entirely negligible. Do you really think that my node should count as much as a big exchange's node ? Do you think that my node is as heavy as the Winkelvoss brothers' node they may use ?
There are about 4000 bitcoin nodes. My weight is 1/4000 of "nodes". I don't control $5 million dollars of bitcoin (at all - I'm only using it as a currency, and very rarely so). I'm maybe even going to set up a second node, for the fun of it. Do you think that my vote should count twice ?
THAT is the reason why proof of work is used as a consensus "voting" system, and not "proof of node".
Users only need ONE single node to connect their wallets to.