Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Bitcoin's blockchain size
by
ranochigo
on 06/08/2021, 07:20:34 UTC
When you run a node, you're following the voters. If you don't decide to mine, but run a node instead, you have no “opinion” in the consensus, because you have no power on the system. The system is empowered only from those who mine, who provide the security.

By running a Bitcoin node, you vote what other voters do.
By running a Bitcoin node, you are enforcing your own rules, no matter how the miners want to or have implemented. If your node doesn't agree to the new rules, then your node won't follow them because it isn't compliant with your rules.

There is simply no point about trying to mine. You are only a significant proportion of the miner if you (and those who are in line with your views) are able to mine a block. Even so, being able to mine blocks doesn't entitle you to the rights to amend the rules of the network. Full nodes are enforcers of the rules, if you don't want to comply with the economic majority, then you risk mining on the chain that no one follows. The consensus that really matter comes from the economic majority. Miner's signalling only shows that
they are compliant with the proposed rules.

If miners really form the bulk of the consensus, then how did we manage to settle the segwit deadlock? There are contingencies for forced activation of rules as well, so I'm not sure how miners really hold that much power if the economic majority are the ones transacting in Bitcoin, not them.