Eric,

> A million nodes saying a transaction is invalid does nothing to enforce that knowledge

It does. Nodes disregard invalid transactions and invalid blocks as if they never existed. It is not possible for any party to transact bitcoin in a way that violates the set of rules enforced by the network of consensus-compatible nodes that we call Bitcoin.

Zac

On Wed, Jun 30, 2021 at 2:03 PM Eric Voskuil <eric@voskuil.org> wrote:

A million nodes saying a transaction is invalid does nothing to enforce that knowledge.

An economic node is a person who refuses to accept invalid money. A node only informs this decision, it cannot enforce it. That’s up to people.

And clearly if one is not actually accepting bitcoin for anything at the time, he is not enforcing anything.

The idea of a non-economic node is well established, nothing new here.

e

On Jun 30, 2021, at 04:33, Zac Greenwood <zachgrw@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Eric,

> A node (software) doesn’t enforce anything. Merchants enforce consensus rules

… by running a node which they believe to enforce the rules of Bitcoin.

A node definitely enforces consensus rules and defines what is Bitcoin. I am quite disturbed that this is even being debated here.

Zac