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
>
>