Everyone that argues for mempool policy doesn't actually understand technical implications of mempool policy. Your node doesn't give a shit about your mempool policy. That's the whole argument. The mempool policy is to prevent bug or otherwise from crashing nodes by consuming too many resources. Anything else is just a virtue signal. Virtue signalling is bullshit. You want to change it? Fork over the cash and get someone to write a PR to remove the OP code completely. That's the only way to stop jpegs on your precious node. You won't though. And you won't hard fork to make it so when Bitcoin refuses to disable the OP code. Get real. Stop the bullshit. If you don't think it's Bullshit, then you don't understand what you're arguing for.
Discussion
You’re missing an important nuance about block propagation.
While it’s true that your node’s mempool policy doesn’t directly affect block acceptance at the consensus layer, it does directly affect transaction and block propagation across the network.
Nodes with restrictive relay policies won’t propagate certain transactions, meaning these transactions won’t reach a significant portion of the network’s mempool—including miners’ nodes—efficiently. Practically, this means miners won’t reliably see or include transactions that the economic majority’s nodes aren’t relaying.
So if economically significant nodes (exchanges, wallet providers, major services) uniformly adopt restrictive relay policies, miners face a practical dilemma…
They can include transactions that large parts of the network haven’t propagated: resulting in slower block relay, increased orphan risk, and economic inefficiency.
OR… align with the economic majority’s relay policies: ensuring their blocks propagate quickly, maximizing their own revenue and reducing risk.
So if you actually use your node you are exerting economic pressure towards your policies (however small)… not just virtue signaling.
Every single node is equally economically significant. If they weren't , they couldn't be in concensous. So it is just a virtue signal. That's my counter.
No, every node is not equally economically significant. You’re conflating consensus validation (where all full nodes are equal, technically speaking) with economic influence over miner incentives.
Consensus just means “do these blocks follow the rules?” Yes… every full node validates equally here. But PROPAGATION (the relaying of transactions and blocks across the network) is where economic weight matters.
Nodes that relay lots of economically valuable transactions (like those of exchanges, payment processors, custodians) effectively control visibility into fee-paying transactions.
Meanwhile nodes without economically meaningful transaction flow (like hobby nodes / passive validators) don’t influence miner revenue or block propagation incentives significantly. I’m guessing this is what your argument focuses on.
Miners rely on rapid, reliable block propagation to minimize orphan risk. If a miner includes transactions that economically influential nodes refuse to relay, the miner’s block propagates more slowly or incompletely, raising the miner’s risk and lowering profitability.
That is not true. Concensous is the bar for economic viability.
Not if the miner can’t actually use the coins they earned in an orphaned block… keep in mind the other miners are working against the orphans for themselves too. It’s an adversarial environment
Every node works equally to validate each block, regardless if they are passive or in active economical use. So I don't quite understand where this distinction is coming from. Can you elaborate? I don't see how consensus is separate from propagation. Nodes validate blocks, once validated per their node's rules they then move on to propagate across their peer nodes to initiate consensus. How does an economically active node does propagation but the other doesn't?
Let’s say we have two nodes - both follow the same consensus set, but only one is used to broadcast his user’s txs and validate his balances. Which of those two nodes in your opinion has the bigger economic weight?
But economic weight here seems like an invalid category in the frame of this conversation. Yes, it is more valid economically but that does not give it a better or worse stand when it comes to consensus. All blocks have equal weight when it comes to propagation and consensus. Could you explain how exactly, in terms of the consensus protocol, a node becomes more important if it initiated a transaction vs one that didn't?
In terms of consensus, it doesn’t. But miners care when money and incentives get involved.