To me, it seems like a node is just a record of agreed upon reality. I don't see how it gives me a vote in anything. It seems read only from my perspective. But if that isn't true and we do get a 'vote' (whatever that means), I'm curious of what that means if someone just prints a bunch of nodes. It sounds like the whole vote thing is an oversimplification.
Discussion
Having a vote means that you, as a node runner, can choose to follow a specific protocol. If someone tries to send you bitcoin from a protocol that has a different supply, you can reject it. If people try to change the code, you can object to that and run the code you agree to on your node.
If you don’t have a node, you’re not a peer. If you’re not a peer, you rely on a peer to relay your transactions and tell you the state of the network. If you, without a node, don’t like a change, you can’t really express your disagreement because you’re not a peer and you’re not in charge of what code is being run by the peer that’s relaying your transactions.
Hope this helps, but do ask AI
I understand I can ask AI things. I came to Nostr to ask people on Nostr. AI just spits back generic information it records from popular sources. I don't get the same serendipitous experience that I do talking with people on Nostr about things. Like browsing Amazon vs a random library in a town. They will never be the same. Serendipity is still valuable to me even with AI. But AI really is a separate issue that I wasn't really looking to address here.
I appreciate the resources you shared though.
That said, I sometimes do both and even use old school search engines 😁
I like to get multiple angles to learn what I'm missing.
Nothing wrong with asking people, but AI can answer the very basic non controversial questions people have, so they can ask better more nuanced questions to real people.
Let AI do 90% of the work and people the other 10%
Interestingly, I asked this question to AI and it contradicted itself on several points. To be fair, I wasn't specific enough regarding majority node control (which is what I was really asking). So in fairness, AI does sometimes help me learn how to ask better questions. I do agree with that. My human brain just understands that would be majority given the current numbers.
But asking it about majority control gave an answer that is 100% slanted toward an attack vector (if that was the goal, but it could be regardless). Like it would be game over. But is that true? That isn't something I'm finding AI is imaginative enough to speculate on. At least not the models I've asked. Even the couple benefits it gave are still bad for the average pleb.
So I'm kind of back where I started. Running my own node still seems important, but how important is it if someone can just out node me and everyone else?
Anyway, I appreciate the interaction and at least know that I have some knowledge gaps and want people to keep asking these questions.
Peace 🫂
a node interacts with the p2p network and influences what things propagate faster or slower into node mempools.
this is both in relaying transactions, blocks, as well as whether it will accept a new block that it would otherwise reject (this can only happen to the best block, once a confirmation piles on top the node must accept it or be forked off the network).
if other nodes don't like your relay policies they can black list your node's p2p address, but on the whole it does influence the network in important ways because the transactions that get filtered the least get into blocks before the others can propagate.
it's a very soft power thing, and only really has an impact on latency of transactions getting to a miner who mints a block, or when the size of the network mempool starts to purge small fee transactions, these relays also affect the transactions that can get into blocks because they will preferentially relay the others. in this way also you can do a service to the network by enlarging your mempool so that typical default configurations that would drop transactions would see them propagated again by those who didn't.
it's not a "vote" per se, it's more like, you have an impact on what is more likely to get into a block sooner, and when the mempool is full, what transactions will be dropped and which won't.