> I never said that they can't. I said that other nodes can choose to ignore them.
Who cares? That doesn't matter at all. Other miners will pick up the found block and any node that ignores what they are doing will just unsync themselves and become useless.
> Do you have a better link?
For the thing that's irrelevant to anything we are talking about? I'll get right on that.
> Who cares? That doesn't matter at all. Other miners will pick up the found block and any node that ignores what they are doing will just unsync themselves and become useless.
What good is a block if no exchange or wallet will accept it (and its coins) as valid? Miners aren't all-powerful entities in a blockchain. In order to have any say at all in the blockchain's behavior (let alone cash out their coins), they (1) need other nodes to recognize their blocks as valid, and (2) need a reliable underlying network to propagate their blocks. If no one accepts a miner's block, or if the block cannot be propagated, then it's the _miner_ that's useless.
Like, this is distributed systems 101 stuff. If your node broadcasts a message, and no one accepts it, then your node is dead for all intents and purposes. If 100% of miners are producing blocks that the rest of the network isn't accepting, then 100% of the miners are effectively dead.
To think of this concretely, what do you think would happen if 100% of Bitcoin miners suddenly stopped honoring Segwit witness data, and started mining blocks that claimed Segwit transaction outputs as their own (which is technically allowed, since they are marked as anyone-can-spend)? Pre-Segwit nodes would accept these blocks (my aforementioned link shows that such nodes exist on the network today), but do you think Segwit-aware nodes would accept them?
> For the thing that's irrelevant to anything we are talking about? I'll get right on that.
> What good is a block if no exchange or wallet will accept it (and its coins) as valid?
It only matters what the other miners accept. If all the miners accept a block but "exchanges and nodes don't", then they have stopped updating their chain. What are they updating to if it isn't what the miners agree on?
> (1) need other nodes to recognize their blocks as valid,
No, they need other miners to accept their blocks and build on top of them.
> (2) need a reliable underlying network to propagate their blocks.
They have that, it's called the internet. Do you think broadcasting 1 MB blocks is difficult?
> If 100% of miners are producing blocks that the rest of the network isn't accepting, then 100% of the miners are effectively dead.
The miners are the network. If they all agree the other can either relay their chain or do nothing. There is only the chain the miners agree on. What exactly do you think relay nodes will do if they don't relay what the miners create?
> You sound like a very pleasant person.
This is the cry of someone who can't explain what they claim. I don't know where you formed a solidified but completely wrong idea in your head, but someone mislead you.
To recap: There is what the miners agree on or there is nothing. Relay nodes have no say in what a valid block is. They can relay valid blocks or not.
I see you still haven't answered my question about how pre-Segwit nodes will behave. If you don't know, just say so.
> This is the cry of someone who can't explain what they claim. I don't know where you formed a solidified but completely wrong idea in your head, but someone mislead you.
Before you reply, why don't you try checking my profile? I think you will find that it is you who are mistaken.
Who cares? That doesn't matter at all. Other miners will pick up the found block and any node that ignores what they are doing will just unsync themselves and become useless.
> Do you have a better link?
For the thing that's irrelevant to anything we are talking about? I'll get right on that.