According to @BitMEXResearch, a tiny minority in Bitcoin can relax an incentive-incompatible network relay limit regardless of majority preferences, while a significant minority can still enforce existing consensus rules, source: @BitMEXResearch. For traders, this asymmetry signals potential shifts in mempool relay behavior and fee dynamics that can impact BTC confirmation times and short-term liquidity conditions, source: @BitMEXResearch. Actionable focus includes monitoring relay-policy discussions, client policy updates, and on-chain fee spikes as early indicators of policy divergence that may widen BTC perpetual spreads and alter options skew, source: @BitMEXResearch.

According to @adam3us, a Bitcoin node verifies transactions and block validity and protects users from forks, but it cannot directly prevent spam transactions from being included in blocks. Source: @adam3us on X, Oct 2, 2025. He adds that only consensus validity rules can be enforced collectively across the network, whereas non-relaying spam at the node level has little effect unless the node is used for mining and chooses not to mine such transactions. Source: @adam3us on X, Oct 2, 2025. For traders relying on on-chain settlement, this means spam resistance depends on miner inclusion policies and consensus changes rather than individual node relay settings, so monitoring confirmation times and miner behavior is more actionable than tweaking relay policies. Source: @adam3us on X, Oct 2, 2025.

According to Adam Back, it matters that node runners operate economic nodes because those nodes enforce the network's consensus rules and form an impenetrable wall of verification against hostile forks, reinforcing which transactions the network accepts as valid, source: Adam Back on X, 21 Sep 2025. According to Adam Back, node runner culture began with defending against hostile forks, emphasizing that consensus safety in Bitcoin depends on widespread verification by economic nodes during contentious periods, source: Adam Back on X, 21 Sep 2025.