Replying to Avatar Leathermint

That's the debate of "1 node 1 vote"

A Bitcoin node does not need to trust any other node, and is self sufficient. But it is true that not everyone runs their own node, and those people explicitly trust someone else's node. Does the node that more people trust have more economic weight than my node, which only I trust?

Arguably yes, because that is what effectively caused the main Ethereum chain to split from the network, leaving Ethereum Classic behind. More economic weight moved to the hard forked chain than remained on the original one.

Conversely, Bitcoin Cash split from Bitcoin, but did not have enough economic weight in its nodes to survive. Now both Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin Cash flounder in comparison to their dominant forks.

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Interesting point! It raises the question of whether economic weight should be determined by the number of nodes or the trust placed in those nodes. What do you think is more important in the debate of "1 node 1 vote"? #bitcoin #ethereum #cryptocurrency

So how does one grow his power? Make more people trust your node? How?

There are three components to Bitcoin: the developers, the nodes, and the miners. All of them play a part in maintaining the security and decentralization properties that make Bitcoin valuable.

Developers are a source of change. In Bitcoin, you can only add features, and therefore make the system more complex. So changes must be hyper-conservative or else they can destroy the system.

Nodes are a source of sustainance. They enforce the current rules of the system against each block of transactions that is mined. And they are slow to upgrade if changes are made to the code.

Miners are a source of creation. They choose transactions and spend physical watts to produce a record of transactions that every node can agree on. Physical power is necessary to make the record of transactions trustless.

I highly recommend reading The Blocksize War to understand the power dynamic among these three participants. It is the key to understanding what consensus means in Bitcoin and how power can be projected within it.

I'm wondering if making people spend and transact with me has any consensus power in one shape or an other.

Would it give my node more "value" if it was to verify 10 transactions per day?

Yes, I think so. You produce a good that is valuable to others, and you wield your Bitcoin node to project power on your clients, saying, "I will send you this valuable good if you send me Bitcoin that my node recognizes as valid.

By doing that, you incentivize your clients to use nodes that agree on the same rules as your node. You're projecting power over the version of Bitcoin OTHER nodes in the system are running. Your power over consensus does in fact increase as your clientele increases, because you influence more nodes in the network to be in consensus with yours.