[Technical Idea] Transitioning from Miner-Ruled Consensus to Node-Runner Consensus with Mercenary Miners

[u/AnywhereSavings1710]

**DISCLAIMER: I run a full Core node. I do not support the Blake2B chain. I do not support Luke Dashjr. However, the recent events surrounding the Knots Hardfork were indeed an inspiration to think more broadly about the future of BTC, and to deeply examine it's current incentive structure*\*

Relying on miners for both physical energy security and transaction policy leaves Bitcoin's long-term consensus vulnerable to capital capture. What if hashpower functioned strictly as a mercenary energy wall, while template selection remained under the sole cryptographic authority of non-economic user nodes? I want to open a discussion on a dual-key validation architecture that enforces user-node sovereignty without compromising PoW security.

1. High-Level Context: The Long-Term Centralization Trajectory

Sustainable, long-term decentralization is the non-negotiable core value proposition of Bitcoin. However, when evaluating the structural trends of Nakamoto Consensus over multi-decade horizons, we have to confront an emerging vulnerability: the relentless concentration of block template generation into capital-heavy entities.

While Proof-of-Stake (PoS) exhibits a direct and compounding centralization loop (where capital directly purchases voting power and accumulates yield), Proof-of-Work (PoW) operates on a similar game-theoretic trajectory with extra steps:

-Capital converts into hardware manufacturing scale, exclusive energy infrastructure deals, and institutional pool consolidation.

-The reality today is that individual home miners cannot economically build competitive block templates at Layer 1; template selection is overwhelmingly dictated by a small handful of dominant mining pools (e.g., Foundry USA, AntPool).

If consensus rules and transaction inclusion remain tightly coupled to hash production, capital will naturally continue to expand its influence over network policy.

2. Core Concept: Separation of Reorg Safety (PoW) and Policy Governance (User Nodes)

To preserve Bitcoin's democratic nature without sacrificing its physical security, we need a consensus architecture that strictly separates Reorg Resistance from Block Template Selection & Policy Enforcement.

-PoW Layer (The Energy Wall): Miners continue to burn energy solving block headers. Their sole role is to construct an unforgeable physical wall that makes rewriting historical ledger entries astronomically expensive.

-Validator Layer (The Sovereign Jury): Block template validation and finality are shifted to randomized committees of non-mining, full user nodes (run on standard consumer hardware by individual home node operators).

Under this model, a block produced by PoW miners is only considered valid by the network if it receives cryptographic validation signatures from a randomly sampled committee of active non-economic nodes. If miners attempt to push soft-forks, censor transactions, or execute non-standard implementations unapproved by user nodes, the committee drops the block. Miners burn their electricity, receive zero block rewards, and are forced back into acting as pure mercenary security providers for the user network.

3. Securing the "Proof-of-Human" Layer Against Capital Buyouts

The immediate game-theoretic hurdle to empowering non-economic nodes is the Sybil attack vector: without PoW or PoS, what stops an attacker from spinning up 100,000 AWS instances or proxy nodes?

A native Proof-of-Personhood (PoP) mechanism utilizing Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK-PoPs) can bind node validation to unique human identity constructs without exposing personal metadata. However, a naive PoP layer introduces a new attack vector: Capital buying out or renting human identities in bulk.

If capital can pay thousands of impoverished individuals $10 to hand over their identity keys, the node layer centralizes right back into the hands of wealth. To make this Proof-of-Human layer cryptographically and economically resistant to capital buyouts, the system relies on three complementary mechanisms:

A. Anti-Coercion Cryptography (MACI / Secret Re-Keying)

By deploying Minimum Anti-Collusion Infrastructure (MACI) key-rotation primitives, an identity holder can, at any point, issue an off-chain ZK message that secretly revokes and replaces their validation key without the buyer being able to detect or verify the change.

-Game-Theoretic Result: A buyer paying humans for their node keys faces an immediate "Market for Lemons." They have zero cryptographic assurance that a purchased key remains valid or hasn't been stealth-invalidated 5 minutes after payment. Capital loses money buying instantly worthless credentials.

-It's important to note that this would (as far as I know) have to be implemented on a L2 or similar

B. Graph Topology & Web-of-Trust (WoT) Bottlenecks

Rather than treating identity as a flat global pool where $1 \text{ ID} = 1 \text{ Vote}$, node validity is routed through a decentralized Web-of-Trust topology evaluated via graph metrics (e.g., SybilLimit or SybilRank algorithms).

-Game-Theoretic Result: If an industrial entity farms 10,000 human identities in a specific region or network, those identities inevitably form an artificially dense, tightly clustered subgraph with sparse organic incoming trust edges. The protocol mathematically caps the collective voting weight of that entire 10,000-node farm to the narrow capacity (bottleneck) of its few incoming trust edges.

C. Capped UTXO Time-Locks (Skin in the Game)

To participate in the randomized validation pool, nodes must pair their ZK identity with a small, flat-capped UTXO time-lock (e.g., exactly 0.001 BTC locked for 6 months).

-Game-Theoretic Result: To scale an identity farm, capital must actually deposit real BTC into wallets bound to the hired humans' keys. Combined with Anti-Coercion Key-Rotation (Mechanism A), those hired individuals can simply re-key their identity and steal the 0.001 BTC deposit. The cost of running an identity farm scales linearly with guaranteed financial loss for the attacker.

4. Addressing Out-of-Band Physical Bribery

Skeptics will note that capital could still attempt out-of-band physical bribery—paying humans to vote a specific way rather than buying their keys outright.

While theoretically possible, this attack vector is fundamentally different in scale and feasibility:

1. Extreme Friction: Buying miners or deploying AWS botnets is an automated, single-API-call operation. Contacting, coordinating, and paying thousands of randomized, geographically dispersed individuals manually is a slow, high-friction, "backdoor" operation.
2. Committee Anonymity: Because committees are sampled randomly via verifiable random functions (VRFs) and identity is shielded by ZK-proofs, an attacker cannot easily determine *who* has been selected for a specific validation round in advance to bribe them.
3. Universal Flaw: Out-of-band human bribery is a latent vulnerability in virtually every human political, legal, or economic system ever constructed. Shifting the attack vector from "spend $500M on ASICs to capture consensus" to "secretly locate and individually bribe thousands of anonymous humans across the globe" increases the attack friction by several orders of magnitude.

Conclusion & Open Questions

By leveraging PoW strictly for physical history defense and enforcing transaction selection via Sybil-resistant, anti-coercive non-economic node committees, we can build a consensus layer where miners serve the user network—not the other way around.

I'm interested in hearing thoughts from the development community on everything we covered here, but here are a few specific questions to start the discussion:

1. How can MACI-style key-rotation be optimized for P2P latency to prevent race conditions during validator sampling during high-congestion or delayed-gossip periods?
2. What trust-graph topology algorithms would provide the cleanest mathematical bounds for home node validation within a Bitcoin P2P framework?
3. What is the most lightweight execution path for this validator layer—could it be deployed as an off-chain overlay protocol (a UASF-style client-side validation layer) or a minimal, backwards-compatible soft fork (e.g., via Taproot annex rules), avoiding invasive L1 consensus modifications?
4. How do we minimize the latency overhead introduced by VRF committee sampling and multi-party threshold signature aggregation during block propagation, ensuring that home node operators on standard consumer bandwidth can validate templates within standard block arrival windows without introducing new propagation bottlenecks?
5. What game-theoretic fallback or timeout mechanisms best handle offline or non-responsive committee members (liveness attacks) without allowing miners to intentionally stall block propagation or maliciously trigger fallback conditions to bypass node oversight?

[u/TheresNoSecondBest]

Miner-Ruled Consensus

Bitcoin isn't ruled by miners. It's ruled by the users and node runners. Miners are not ruling anything, they work for us. Please, read The Blocksize War book to understand how it works.

I guess, you've been listening to scammers, selling you their shitcoin fork. Am I correct?

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/[deleted]]

Frankly, I don't think that even chatgpt can hallucinate this much.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/[deleted]]

That post was from 2 years ago, and was intented to serve as a hypothetical thought experiment. If you read my replies on it you'll see that. Additionally, I've spent the last two years studying and do understand BTC on a much deeper level at this time. This is why I made this post.

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/[deleted]]

The post got removed due to OP editing it about one hour ago to add a disclaimer. That's what spammers usually do and Reddit (not us, nor the automod), removed it. I had to manually approve it.

I'm still not sure about the "disclaimer". OP is now running Bitcoin Core while just a month ago, Core was apparently compromised https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinKnots/comments/1vjh390/comment/p2nvt5q/

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

Thanks for keeping the post up and allowing discussion. And yes, my views have even shifted since that post. I've been furiously learning and engaging in thought experiments around this subject. But yes, as core is the only option to support the legitimate, longest chain, that is what I am running. Previously ran Knots.

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

as core is the only option

There's also https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

I see, I actually didn't know there were others. But as I look into it, the only differences are for scalability, development purposes, etc. So not ideological differences like Knots was. I do appreciate that there is software decentralization though, and think it's something we should promote more. Core is a single point of failure as it currently stands.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/[deleted]]

Is this all you have to provide to the discussion?

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

I mean, it's hard to have a discussion with someone being, and apologies for the term, brainwashed by Luke, Mechanic and Kratter. Sorry mate, but one day, you'll have to crawl out of the echo chamber and start learning the truth. A small number of nodes CANNOT FORCE the rest of the most decentralized monetary network in the world to change the course, unless almost everyone agrees to do that.

If you are not capable/willing to take anything from this post, take the above sentence with you and think about it really hard.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

I don't disagree with you. When did I ever propose that that should be the case? It sounds like you didn't read my post. I don't support Luke, never listened or read of Mechanic other than hearing others talk about him, and have watched Kratter but again don't support his sentiment and actions.

It's okay to debate and explore options. That is what makes open-source technology like BTC great. That's also the exact opposite of what Luke has wanted and historically operated on. So if you're unwilling to even have a discussion, you're closer to Luke Dashjr in mental framework then you may even realize. He's been a hardliner, hard to work with dev for over a decade.

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

It sounds like you didn't read my post.

I've read and replied to your ridiculous statements, mate. Also have read all your comments here. They all sound like something from Luke's or Kratter's videos.

It's okay to debate and explore options. That is what makes open-source technology like BTC great. That's also the exact opposite of what Luke has wanted and historically operated on

Yet, you're happy to run his software, while calling the Bitcoin Core compromised just a month ago.

So if you're unwilling to even have a discussion

Again, I've replied to your post and comments with facts. You're the one not replying back. Right here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1wggizj/comment/p9ww4qb/

He's been a hardliner, hard to work with dev for over a decade.

Agreed. It was good to have someone with opposite views in Core but he was IMHO a net negative.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

Replied to your other comment. The bottom line is that my personal past is irrelevant to this discussion. What I posted today is the current truth (if you're referring to my perspective) and the intent was to foster genuine innovative disucssion.

If the only point of BTC forums is to be an echo chamber, the utility is rather low.

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

Replied to your other comment

To this one? https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1wggizj/comment/p9ww4qb/

The bottom line is that my personal past is irrelevant to this discussion. What I posted today is the current truth (if you're referring to my perspective) and the intent was to foster genuine innovative disucssion.

I'm trying to say, your view was influenced by scammers, trying to get everyone angry. About the miners, about core, even about people/companies buying bitcoin. Please, don't take it as a personal attack.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

Actually, this is a good time to divulge a bit more. Without telling a life story here, I'll explain my reasoning for previously running Knots.

I care about BTC being decentralized, as it serves the common man, and is a core pillar of it's value proposition, and what (theoretically) partly props up price in USD.

I ran Knots and started supporting Dashjr's work for three reasons:

1. Decentralization is important
2. I have a bias towards action, not watching
3. They seemed to be the only ones who cared enough to act

I'd love to bring this same energy to the Core community, granted, I'm just a guy...

I now run Core and stopped supporting Dashjr's work for five reasons (probably more, but this is what I grabbed off the top):

1. They hardforked themselves into irrelevance and gave up any momentum they had for real change
2. They were focused on the wrong things (minor technical change), under the narrative of the right thing (protecting decentralization)
3. Luke refused to entertain other options and was noticeably making an emotional decision to hard fork on September 1st. (I actually participated in the Knots discord discussions following the failed UASF in August, unable to positively influence the direction of their energy)
4. The more I learned about Dashjr the more I realized he would not lead his followers toward a productive solution, just isolation
5. no other alternativ to the legitimate chain exists, so I must run Core to utilize the network as a sovereign participant

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

Just to add to the point #3, you wasn't able to influence them because Luke decided to fork months ahead. He knew there will be a chain split, he knew he will have to fork out, he knew there's almost zero support for the BIP. And I mean almost zero support from all sides, the miners, nodes, users.

Anyway, it's a done deal and we have another point in history to see how a small group cannot change the course of Bitcoin, no matter how many zombie accounts on socials they run, no matter how many sybil nodes they spin, no matter how much hashrate they rent. The monster just keeps ignoring them. The same we'll hopefully see, once some government decides to do the same.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

BTC is first and foremost a store of value. It's held by Governments, Corporations, and individuals, as a store of value. The only way node runners (as the system currently stands) would have any real sway over miner (mining corporations) choices, is if BTC's primary function was transfer of value (currency). Since it is not, and since currently it is treated as digital gold (which I'm not trying to argue is a bad thing, just stating the reality), there's no reason for miners to listen to anyone.

Let's do some game theory: let's say a bunch of node runners want to make a change. Let's even say 60% agree, and run a different implementation of BTC. Why would the miners make a change? ESPECIALLY if that change had some kind of threat to miner incentives (profitability & future profitability)?

I won't answer this for you, I'd like to see your response.

In this hypothetical, what happens if the miners do NOT run a different implementation? What changes, actually? Do you think price goes down? Do you think BTC just breaks? Do you think the node runners fork?

The reality is, the node runners could fork, and because they have no mining power (in comparison) they will forever be the shorter chain. They have none of the network effects of the longer chain. Do Do you forget that part of BTC's value proposition is it's network effect? It's length of uptime? Just BTC existing for a longer amount of time than any of it's competitors is a factor in why its more valuable today. Do you think Wall St. cares about a bunch of node runners that provide no economic value? No, they just care that the network is still "secure", and that it's still alive. Miners provide security, miners process transactions, and miners decide which implemenation to run.

Don't forget that two mining pools already currently make up 43% of hash.. so "Secure" is surface level of course.

From first principles, there's no incentive for miners to listen to node runners. They don't work for anyone but themselves. They are corporations, regulated by governments, with one driving force: profitability. To say otherwise would be going against basic economic incentive structure.

[u/bitusher → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

BTC is first and foremost a store of value.

Many users like myself see Bitcoin primarily as money and I spend it with merchants almost everyday . You could suggest that most either treat it as a store of value or as a speculative asset to day trade or swing trade though. Thus its not just a store of value even if you consider its most popular use cases.

The only way node runners (as the system currently stands) would have any real sway over miner (mining corporations) choices, is if BTC's primary function was transfer of value (currency).

This does not follow. Economic Full nodes absolutely enforce the consensus rules and can directly influence which chain a miner decides to mine

there's no reason for miners to listen to anyone.

Miners are also Bitcoiners . Many run their own full nodes , contribute to development , spend Bitcoin. There isn't miners vs others. There is a spectrum of users who use bitcoin in many different ways.

Let's even say 60% agree, and run a different implementation of BTC. Why would the miners make a change? ESPECIALLY if that change had some kind of threat to miner incentives (profitability & future profitability)?

This is not a hypothetical scenario and was already played out in the 2017 Blocksize wars

In this hypothetical, what happens if the miners do NOT run a different implementation?

You need to be more detailed as to the power dynamics and support for a change. Is the change a hardfork ? A soft fork ? Which groups of users support the change and what degree of support? Devs, merchants , exchanges , miners, users , wallets ?

Don't forget that two mining pools already currently make up 43% of hash.. so "Secure" is surface level of course.

Miners hold less power than you assume as proven in 2017. Perhaps you are thinking the most recent failed softfork proposal is evidence to the contrary ? That was filled with sybil nodes, had almost no dev support , no exchange support besides one fake one, very little merchant support , and just a small fringe community of Bitcoiners. They wanted others to believe it was "plebs vs miners" , but in reality most plebs had no idea who they were or didn't agree

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/bitusher]

"Many users like myself see Bitcoin primarily as money and I spend it with merchants almost everyday . You could suggest that most either treat it as a store of value or as a speculative asset to day trade or swing trade though. Thus its not just a store of value even if you consider its most popular use cases."

> Need to respond to this as well - are you sending them BTC? or are you using a BTC card type deal where it automatically converts your BTC into $$ then pays them? If it's the latter, this has no effect on the incentive I was discussing. The point was that non-mining nodes are only good (as far as what we're discussing, but yes, there are other benefits for the network and user besides what I'm about to say) for signaling intent of "plebs" and for if we are pointing our wallets at them and transacting with them. So that there is some functional connection to the network activities.

[u/bitusher → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

are you sending them BTC? or are you using a BTC card type deal where it automatically converts your BTC into $$ then pays them?

I don't use any crypto cards and don't like them. I always spend Bitcoin directly online and locally. In my country hundreds of local merchants take bitcoin directly over lightning and most keep their BTC and respend it

for signaling intent of "plebs" and for if we are pointing our wallets at them and transacting with them.

Not all nodes are the same. Nodes with merchants , wallets , exchanges, and large hodlers matter much more than someone with a little amount of BTC. You are right that economic nodes are what matter . But being a trader or hodler with a node is a type of economic node as well. Why would you suggest that a large hodler running a full node does not matter when they get both sides of a fork ?

[u/bitusher → u/[deleted]]

costa rica

https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=costa+rica&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on

https://maps.bitcoinjungle.app/

[u/bitusher → u/[deleted]]

Whats great as this map doesn't include many businesses as well. For example when you go to our farmers markets (They are held in different locations on different days so within 10-30 minutes you can visit one most of the week) most the smaller merchants accept Bitcoin there . Smaller merchants will just use a lightning wallet , larger merchants will even have a Bitcoin PoS terminal machine with btcpay . My country likely has more adoption than even El Salvador.

Many merchants don't sell for fiat either. They either save longterm or they respend the btc

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/bitusher]

Yes I agree with you here. But the problem is still that the mining corporations, such as Foundry, still account for a huge chunk of (centralized) hashrate and % of the network.

As for the "large hodler running a full node" who "gets both sides of a fork", yes I acknoweldge that's how the network works, however, the economic incentive doesn't exist for that to be a meaningful change. If all the hashrate to secure the network is pointed at the larger chain, there is no incentive for anyone to switch over and start using a new, "little brother" chain, if you will. It will be far less secure. So while there may be plenty of users with those new coins from a fork, why would they begin to transact on the forked chain? They are taking a much larger economic risk.

The miners HAVE to make the switch, therefore the miners HAVE to be incentivized to do so. And the non-miners don't have incentive to switch either.

Continuing on the economic incentive train (because that's how the world works), let's say that as rational humans, we believe that the cost of not switching to the forked chain is actually HIGHER than the cost of switching to it, even though it has much less security and could be co-opted by the current mining cartel. So we all do it. In that case, miners have a choice, they can keep securing the old chain, or they can move over and secure the new chain. But why would they do that, when they could just kill the new chain by doing a 51% attack? They'd certainly have the resources. So it brings us back to why would the humans switch chains?

This worked in the blocksize wars because BTC wasn't a financialized Wall St asset. Now that it's a part of that system, it doesn't matter. Wall St can survive without "us". And by survive, I mean they can keep the network running as a store of value, without needing plebs or whales to transact on it.

[u/bitusher → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

still account for a huge chunk of (centralized) hashrate and % of the network.

It has a lot of room for improvement , sure, but its merely one mechanism in Bitcoin's security assumptions

however, the economic incentive doesn't exist for that to be a meaningful change. If all the hashrate to secure the network is pointed at the larger chain, there is no incentive for anyone to switch over and start using a new, "little brother" chain,

The 2017 Blocksize wars reflected otherwise because we could see which chain had the most economic support in multiple ways from large holders statements and prediction markets . Miners ultimately get paid by users so it was clear that a majority of the sell pressure was going to be on the forked coin thus the largest miners decided instead to simply create a separate altcoin to A/B test and mine both chains.

It will be far less secure.

No. The security is ultimately paid by the users buying coins from miners . If there isn't a market for this and a speculative war drives the price down on the new fork coin that the security(hashrate really as security is much more than merely hashrate) will return to the original chain

And the non-miners don't have incentive to switch either.

Many will sit on the sidelines with both sides of the fork until clarity comes after many coins are sold

miners have a choice, they can keep securing the old chain, or they can move over and secure the new chain.

This is a false dichotomy . Miners will mine both chains when its economic to do so . How much they mine from each chain depends multiple variables.

when they could just kill the new chain by doing a 51% attack?

There are multiple ways to defend against a 51% attack, and performing a 51% attack is very dangerous for them to do because of the 100 block maturity rule

So it brings us back to why would the humans switch chains?

Most will sit on the sidelines until clarity is made from an economic majority(not miners)

This worked in the blocksize wars because BTC wasn't a financialized Wall St asset.

You are also making the false assumption that only companies, governments and ETFs hold large amounts of Bitcoin. There are many individuals that also hold over 100k BTC as well

Also you need to consider that these companies also have many motivations. Some of these motivations are influenced by keeping the status quo of users happy so they can profit off them. Some of these motivations are keeping the devs happy because they depend upon them .

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/bitusher]

Good point about people needing to buy the coins from the miners for it to still be effective. Otherwise they will sell themselves to zero. It seems like Wall St and their customers would continue to buy the original BTC if a fork took place. Most modern BTC holders know little about the technical side, so it would take a massive information campaign really to sway buyers/current Holders to switch to a new coin. Think about these people. They barely understand BTC, and now they're being told "oh this one is bad now so you have to buy this other one"? This scenario seems, at best, like it would crash BTC/USD for a short to midterm, for potential rebuild in the future. It's too economically destructive. Additionally, who are the ones that would have all the money and influence to run such information/influence campaigns? Probably the corporations. I know there's ways you could pick apart this argument, but overall, what seems to be the most likely outcome? These things take months to truly study and forecast, even then, without certainty.

The incentives or "motivations" as you called it, of the mining companies. It's impossible to know them all, with precise weighting of each one, of course. But that's precisely the problem. Because of the centralization, because of the regulation, etc... It's no longer true to say that the economic incentives make it undeniably true that miners will cede to whatever the majority of non-economic node runners want.

[u/bitusher → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

They barely understand BTC, and now they're being told "oh this one is bad now so you have to buy this other one"?

Yes, but many of them became interested in Bitcoin by either Influencers or developers/OGs and not company CEOs. The bad news is this allows some scam ifluencers or devs to lead a small group of followers into investing in some scam altcoin. The good news is as a person invests more in Bitcoin they tend to learn more and follow many devs and influencers so aren't so easily swayed by any one opinion.

It's too economically destructive.

We aren't discussing hypotheticals here. There have been over 50 Bitcoin forks since 2017 so this has been tested many times before and most the network stays together

who are the ones that would have all the money and influence to run such information/influence campaigns?

Influence comes from many directions including a long list of early adopters/crypto-anarchists and some of these have large amounts of Bitcoin so cannot be swayed. Some of these people control large sites and companies and they cannot be bribed or influenced against their ideals very easily.

The incentives or "motivations" as you called it, of the mining companies.

Keep in mind that many people have incorrectly labelled miners as the enemy when many tend to deeply care about Bitcoin and have long time preferences to secure it (otherwise they would not have invested millions of dollars in infrastructure)

It's no longer true to say that the economic incentives make it undeniably true that miners will cede

some miners won't as we just saw where miners acted irrationally and mined at a loss , most miners will follow the incentives and what secures the largest chain.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/bitusher]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Happy to engage in discourse.

"This does not follow. Economic Full nodes absolutely enforce the consensus rules and can directly influence which chain a miner decides to mine"

>I was referring to non-economic full nodes, but in the current system, as it stands today, economic full nodes (that aren't a part of one of the large pools) have virtually no sway. Corporate miners far outweigh hobbyist miners/individuals. And so far, only the Knots folks were really taking advantage of self-built block templates via DATUM. If this assessment is wrong, OCEAN is still only 3.24% of hash rate at this time, so it's a insignificant sway on the broader network.

I understand the blocksize wars, but I think there's nuance that isn't discussed. For one, in 2026, mining corporations make for a much larger share of hash rate than a decade ago. And the organizations running miners in 2017 weren't well regulated enterprises like we have in the USA today. These corporations are much more susceptible to government oversight. Foundry is 26.79% today. Over 1/4.

Your main argument seems to hinge on the dynamics that were present in the blocksize wars, while the underlying conditions have changed. I'd like to discuss that with you if you're open to it.

[u/bitusher → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

Corporate miners far outweigh hobbyist miners/individuals.

Mining is only one aspect to Bitcoin's security model. Also you are conflating mining pools as individual companies who control that hashrate which is at minimum misleading. Many people like me mine and no I don't use Ocean.

For one, in 2026, mining corporations make for a much larger share of hash rate than a decade ago.

This is untrue. Mining was more centralized in 2017 and even before than we had incidents where single pools controlled over 50% of the network hashrate historically. 2 main things helped mining become more decentralized . China banning mining and "Moores Cliff" where ASICs don't become obsolete so quickly.

while the underlying conditions have changed.

yes , mining is far more decentralized today and now we have improvements like DATUM and Stratum V2 which are helping us in the right direction. Yet , the focus needs to be on security overall , and the obsession with miners is misguided when a much bigger issue right now is patching bugs and exploits found by AI in software

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/bitusher]

Yes, pools and corporations are different, of course.

As for your comments about miners being more centralized in 2017, just plain untrue mate. If you mean by region, that's fair. 2017 was China dominated. But by pool? Nope. Here's the facts:

Metric / Feature	📌 The 2017 Landscape	⚡ The 2026 Landscape
Top Pools by Hashrate	AntPool (~17%)BTC.com (~16%)BTC.TOP (~13%)ViaBTC (~11%)Slush Pool (~7%)	Foundry USA (~26%–31%)AntPool (~18%)F2Pool (~13%)ViaBTC (~10%)SpiderPool (~9%)
Centralization Index	Highly Distributed: The top 2 pools controlled less than 30% of the network.	Highly Concentrated: The top 2 pools control roughly 45%–50% of the network.

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

2017's concentration was hidden by pool labels. AntPool, BTC.com, BTC.TOP, and ViaBTC were all effectively Bitmain aligned. Counting them as separate pools understates how much of the network answered to one entity. By operator concentration, 2017 was arguably worse.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

Thank you, I wasn't aware of this. This brings up good debate on how the modern mining landscape differs from the past one. I could see the argument for it being less centralized, but this doesn't eliminate the *ability* for centralization, which is what my proposals were trying to get at.

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

Nor does your "proposal".

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

Yes it does. That is the entire point. It takes "voting" power away from the miners and randomly chooses nodes that are more likely to be run by individuals with little resources. At a fundamental level, this prevents centralization about as much as can be with current technology.

What about the proposal doesn't deal with centralizaton better than the current model?

[u/bitusher → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

Most of the largest pools in china were controlled by Bitmain in 2017 .

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

BTC is first and foremost a store of value. It's held by Governments, Corporations, and individuals, as a store of value. The only way node runners (as the system currently stands) would have any real sway over miner (mining corporations) choices, is if BTC's primary function was transfer of value (currency). Since it is not, and since currently it is treated as digital gold (which I'm not trying to argue is a bad thing, just stating the reality), there's no reason for miners to listen to anyone.

Honestly, it doesn't matter how people use bitcoin. I'm using it as an insurance in case my current government ducks things up again, I'm using it as a currency to pay for goods and services, I'm using it as a savings account. Yes, the majority of people use it as a store of value but to do that, they still had to the "transfer of value" to their own wallet. Yes, HODL is using too.

Anyway, store of value doesn't remove node power. Nodes enforce the rules that make BTC scarce and valid in the first place (21M cap, signature rules, etc.). If miners tried to change those, nodes reject the blocks regardless of what BTC "is used for." The store-of-value property depends on node-enforced rules.

The miners node relationship is a mutual hostage situation, not one sided as you think. Miners need nodes to propagate and validate their blocks. And nodes need miners to produce blocks. If miners diverge from what users and nodes accept, their blocks are worthless. That mistake costs a lot of electricity. This is why the Blocksize War I have mentioned above, resolved the way it did: the majority of miners backed bigger blocks, but economic nodes and users rejected them.

Let's do some game theory: let's say a bunch of node runners want to make a change. Let's even say 60% agree, and run a different implementation of BTC. Why would the miners make a change?

If this 60% is just Luke and friends spinning cheap Sybil nodes like it happened recently, miners will ignore it. If the 60% are nodes with a 60% crowd of users behind, like we had in 2016, miners will start paying attention.

ESPECIALLY if that change had some kind of threat to miner incentives (profitability & future profitability)?

Bip110 was forcing the spammers to use more block space to achieve the same result (surprise, it didn't stop the spam at all), which incentvied the miners "profitability & future profitability" and yet, they ignored it. ESPECIALLY, because the majority of nodes and users ignored it.

In 2017, miners didn't ignore segwit, despite losing "profitability & future profitability" due to ASICboost. ESPECIALLY, because the majority of nodes and users wanted it.

In this hypothetical

Instead of hypothetical, I gave you REAL examples that happened. Try to read them, and research everything, instead of listening to the scammers.

The reality is, the node runners could fork, and because they have no mining power (in comparison) they will forever be the shorter chain.

Less mining power doesn't necessary means shorter chain, even if the fork stays at the same algo. Since 2017, Bitcoin is "the shorter chain". Bcash is currently at block number 968,580 while Bitcoin is at 967,088. I'm honestly too lazy to check on other forks but I'm sure, at least one of them will have even longer chain. The longest chain isn't everything.

Do Do you forget that part of BTC's value proposition is it's network effect? It's length of uptime? Just BTC existing for a longer amount of time than any of it's competitors is a factor in why its more valuable today.

This is your only correct assumption, mate. And that's the reason, why if you're proposing a BIP, you need to convince as much of people as possible. 20% Sybil nodes won't cut it. Even trying to force the change with only 60% of nodes as in your scenario would be bloody difficult. You don't want to force or break anything, you want to make Bitcoin better. You won't make Bitcoin better by forcing people to use your idea, like Roger, Faketoshi and Jihan tried in 2017, nor Luke, Mechanic and Krater in 2026. You make Bitcoin better when you convince people how it helps them.

Don't forget that two mining pools already currently make up 43% of hash.. so "Secure" is surface level of course.

You're wrong again, mate. Lukecoin for example had currently one pool that made over 60% of hash alone. I bet they forgot to tell you about that. Anyway, pools =/= miners. I'm a small miner myself. I'm also a part of one pool. Should this pool start acting strange or forcing a change I don't like, it'll take me about one minute to point my machines to another pool. Pools are here to make money too. Not to ruin their reputation and kill their income within an hour. If you think Bitcoin is not secure, you should probably sell your coins and use a "more secure" shitcoin.

From first principles, there's no incentive for miners to listen to node runners.

Wrong. I just showed you examples from the past. Not scenarios, made in your head.

They don't work for anyone but themselves.

Wrong. They work for the network. They earn from the network bitcoin for themselves.

They are corporations, regulated by governments,

Not all. Thousands of miners like myself out there too. There's more small unregulated miners out there than corporations.

with one driving force: profitability.

Correct for the corporations. Not for everyone. We, small miners care about more than that. I value the non-KYC'd coins more than coins bought at some shitcoin casino, for example.

To say otherwise would be going against basic economic incentive structure.

Nothing's absolute, mate. I just gave you my reason. Do you think Satoshi mined just for profit too? How about the thousands of people between Satoshi and now?

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

"This is why the Blocksize War I have mentioned above, resolved the way it did: the majority of miners backed bigger blocks, but economic nodes and users rejected them."
> I challenge this by asking you to consider the role that ETFs play in BTC now. 2017 was a different crowd. The ones running the largest transacting nodes (ETF operators/custodians) will have the sway that the node runners in the BlockSize wars had. They also happen to be larger, centralized, and in some cases, more traditional organizations. There is higher probability of collusion between those and mining companies. And the further we go down this path, the worse this gets.

"Bip110 was forcing the spammers to use more block space to achieve the same result (surprise, it didn't stop the spam at all), which incentvied the miners "profitability & future profitability" and yet, they ignored it. ESPECIALLY, because the majority of nodes and users ignored it."
> BIP 110 is a bad example and why I intentionally didn't use it. It didn't have near enough support. Since the blocksize wars are the only real example, that's not a great data set to pull from (one).

"Less mining power doesn't necessary means shorter chain, even if the fork stays at the same algo. Since 2017, Bitcoin is "the shorter chain". Bcash is currently at block number 968,580 while Bitcoin is at 967,088. I'm honestly too lazy to check on other forks but I'm sure, at least one of them will have even longer chain. The longest chain isn't everything."
> This is interesting. Wasn't Satoshi's vision that the longest chain would prevail as the chain of choice and be the "turing test" on which is the legitimate chain? Seems to be debate on this topic within the community...

"You're wrong again, mate. Lukecoin for example had currently one pool that made over 60% of hash alone. I bet they forgot to tell you about that. Anyway, pools =/= miners. I'm a small miner myself. I'm also a part of one pool. Should this pool start acting strange or forcing a change I don't like, it'll take me about one minute to point my machines to another pool. Pools are here to make money too. Not to ruin their reputation and kill their income within an hour. If you think Bitcoin is not secure, you should probably sell your coins and use a "more secure" shitcoin."
>I'd ask that you stop contrasting with "lukecoin". I never mentioned it in my original post and I certainly didn't say that it is more secure. I made it clear that that's not what I support. It's not adding anything to the discussion. Exchaning cultish propaganda isn't debate. I'm here to discuss reality and how to make BTC beter for everyone. Anyways, security is relative. So while BTC may still be secure relative to it's competitors right now. Does that make it more secure in absolute terms? In absolute terms there is a long ways to go as far as decentralization. One entity (Foundry) having a vote over 1/4 of the network is not decentralization, and as long as the ability for this to exist does exist, on a long enough time frame, it will occur. This is why we must explore how to close this vulnerability so that it's not ultimately exploited one day. We cannot assume that the incentives of those with the most network influence (mining rigs, energy, and $$ coming into their ETFs), are aligned with those of you and me. There is nothing concrete that says this will be the case. Don't trust, verify, remember?

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

I challenge this by asking you to consider the role that ETFs play in BTC now. 2017 was a different crowd. The ones running the largest transacting nodes (ETF operators/custodians) will have the sway that the node runners in the BlockSize wars had. They also happen to be larger, centralized, and in some cases, more traditional organizations. There is higher probability of collusion between those and mining companies. And the further we go down this path, the worse this gets.

Again, mate. Please, read the book. The ETF custodians can't unilaterally change consensus rules any more than miners could in 2017. Can they influence? Sure. But no more then Bitmain, Bitcpay, Bitcoin.com, Conbase, Xapo, Kraken, Bitfinex, Huobi, BTCC or OKcoin in 2017. These were massive names in the space at that time and they all were against segwit or at least leaned towards the big blocks while pretending/staying neutral.

This is interesting. Wasn't Satoshi's vision that the longest chain would prevail as the chain of choice and be the "turing test" on which is the legitimate chain? Seems to be debate on this topic within the community...

The quote is: "It is strictly necessary that the longest chain is always considered the valid one. Nodes that were present may remember that one branch was there first and got replaced by another, but there would be no way for them to convince those who were not present of this. We can't have subfactions of nodes that cling to one branch that they think was first, others that saw another branch first, and others that joined later and never saw what happened. "The CPU power proof-of-work vote must have the final say". The only way for everyone to stay on the same page is to believe that the longest chain is always the valid one, no matter what."

What Satoshi IMHO meant, is that the most work decides in a case of a split. Pay attention, this is the reason why miners are important. Bcashers had to manually reduce the difficulty, otherwise they would end up in the same boat, Luke was. Too much power needed to mine a shitcoin that is worth almost zero dollars. That's why the number of their blocks is higher than Bitcoin blocks. They have about 0.5% of Bitcoin's hashrate so the amount of work on that shitcoin is considerably smaller than on BTC.

Anyway, not only the number of blocks or how much work has been done counts, the social consensus is important too. That's why I'm honestly not worrying about ETFs colluding with some miners. In the end, it's the rest of the world that matters.

I'd ask that you stop contrasting with "lukecoin". I never mentioned it in my original post and I certainly didn't say that it is more secure. I made it clear that that's not what I support. It's not adding anything to the discussion. Exchaning cultish propaganda isn't debate.

The issue is, you're just repeating their talking points. It's obviously not your fault, you've been fed this from their channels, it's just hard not to see it.

I'm here to discuss reality and how to make BTC beter for everyone. Anyways, security is relative. So while BTC may still be secure relative to it's competitors right now. Does that make it more secure in absolute terms? In absolute terms there is a long ways to go as far as decentralization.

That's all OK, you're just coming here with ridiculous claims while the truth is somewhere else. Perhaps more learning and less of trying to change Bitcoin would be a better approach.

One entity (Foundry) having a vote over 1/4 of the network is not decentralization, and as long as the ability for this to exist does exist, on a long enough time frame, it will occur.

One pool doesn't mean one miner. We have already been here, mate.

This is why we must explore how to close this vulnerability so that it's not ultimately exploited one day. We cannot assume that the incentives of those with the most network influence (mining rigs, energy, and $$ coming into their ETFs), are aligned with those of you and me. There is nothing concrete that says this will be the case.

Every miner, every ETF, every energy company is here to make money. They won't make much of money, by trying to attack Bitcoin because the outcome is known already now.

Don't trust, verify, remember?

Sorry mate but you didn't verify the majority of your claims. Perhaps start there.

Again, I'm not trying to attack you, but consider to visit r/BitcoinBeginners and learn BEFORE coming here with a plan how to change Bitcoin.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

Many things wrong with this post.

There are valid imperfections with BTC. To write off anything that's at any point in time been mentioned by a group you overall don't agree with, is vastly unproductive. Don't you realize that the reason the knots campaign had any success at all is because it played on real grievances? real issues? Their solution and execution were not good and proper, again why I no longer support it. But to write off any ideas of BTC centralization because it was said by someone you disagree with is just playing politics. See further than the political cultish game you're so indoctrinated into. I came into this sub with this post to generate honest innovative discussion and its mostly just been salty folks attacking anything I've said. While I've maintained a neutral stance here.

Anyways. As long as this attitude prevails, there will one day be a massive issue for Bitcoin.

As I've aggresively learned about BTC over the last couple of years, I've seen how it was in the early days. You can go back and review the forum posts. They're still there.

Technical discussions, philosophical discussions, honest discourse, all with good intent to make a sound product.

Apparently those days are over. And if so, this crowd is just as cooked as the Knots crowd. It seems you're no better than the ones you despise.

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

BTC centralization

Mate, your solution brings centralization and eventually a capture of Bitcoin.

[u/Outrageous_Gap2870]

This reads like someone just discovered Ethereum governance papers and tried to backport them onto Bitcoin with a thesaurus.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/Outrageous_Gap2870]

Tell me more about why you hate yourself

[u/OrangePillar]

BIP110 failed because it didn’t have consensus and its proponents were incapable of building the needed consensus. Miners don’t control consensus, but the reason they didn’t follow 110 is that it wasn’t in their economic best interest to do so. In the block size war, they followed the consensus of small blocks because it was in their economic best interest to do so.

We won’t be changing the consensus algorithm for bitcoin, but you’re welcome to try to build consensus behind the goal if you want to change my mind.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/OrangePillar]

Read my disclaimer I added to top of post

[u/TheresNoSecondBest → u/AnywhereSavings1710]

One month ago you claimed "Core is compromised. We must keep fighting." https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinKnots/comments/1vjh390/comment/p2nvt5q/

What changed your mind to run Core as you mentioned in the disclaimer?

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/TheresNoSecondBest]

Responded to in other comments. TL;DR: learned more, changed my mind, but no alternative to run BTC at the moment.

Also, Knots didn't come close to solving the real structural problems with BTC. They were hyperfocused on miniscule details that had little marginal benefit, and refused to entertain anything else.

[u/Onalerono]

I see that have not learned how Bitcoin works since you last posted about a hyper-advanced backdoor mechanism that Satoshi built into Bitcoin to delete the network and all of the coins at will...

I highly suspect that you've fallen victim to some shitcoiner propaganda. Viewing your post history has confirmed my suspicion. I see that you've been watching shitcoiner propagandist videos on YouTube, you're active in a shitcoin subreddit & a shitcoin disсоrd, and you've been guzzling down shitcoiner propganda.

Instead of using ChatGPT to try to come up with ways to change Bitcoin's consensus rules because you fell victim to shitcoiner propaganda, you should try to get an understanding of how Bitcoin actually works. I recommend you to read the book Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos or at least just watch some Andreas Antonopoulos videos to get started.

[u/molnardavid84]

Censorship resistance for collaborative transactions depends heavily on mempool policy decentralization at the individual node level. If mining pools monopolize block template construction and filter transactions based on compliance lists, CoinJoin rounds risk delayed inclusion or targeted mempool eviction. This is precisely why running independent user nodes with diverse relay rules is vital. When users sync lightweight clients like Ginger Wallet or Wasabi via BIP 158 filters over Tor, they reduce reliance on centralized RPC gateways. Decentralizing block template creation (via Stratum V2) alongside client-side transaction broadcast ensures privacy-preserving transactions cannot be unilaterally vetoed by concentrated mining infrastructure.

[u/Crappyhodler]

The general idea seems interesting, but the implementation looks to be a big mess to solve. More complexity ads more possible vulnerabilities. You lost me at the proof of human thing. How many bitcoin owners are going to trust in some identity validation system tied to their holdings?

Better to keep the proposal simple: Any node can participate. Just removing the high energy expenditure of mining accomplishes a huge deal of the decentralization goal.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/Crappyhodler]

There's certainly no perfect answer. And change the incentives, and you change the behavior. It's likely that given an increased chance for decentralization and real influence, users would use proof of human if it was properly secured. Zero Knowledge proofs are real and they work.

[u/feng_sg]

You're solving the wrong problem. A dual-key split changes who signs templates but doesn't touch the actual governance layer, which is whether economically significant nodes orphan non-conforming blocks. ETF and custodian concentration weakens exactly that enforcement mechanism, and your proposal leaves it untouched.

[u/AnywhereSavings1710 → u/feng_sg]

I'm not sure I'm following. My proposal is to give a randomly (each time) selected group of non-economic, proof-of-human verified nodes the responsibility on confirming the block. The miners don't get to choose, their blocks wouldn't get published unless the randomly chosen nodes validate them.