EricFJ on Nostr: You’re missing an important nuance about block propagation. While it’s true that ...

You’re missing an important nuance about block propagation.

While it’s true that your node’s mempool policy doesn’t directly affect block acceptance at the consensus layer, it does directly affect transaction and block propagation across the network.

Nodes with restrictive relay policies won’t propagate certain transactions, meaning these transactions won’t reach a significant portion of the network’s mempool—including miners’ nodes—efficiently. Practically, this means miners won’t reliably see or include transactions that the economic majority’s nodes aren’t relaying.

So if economically significant nodes (exchanges, wallet providers, major services) uniformly adopt restrictive relay policies, miners face a practical dilemma…
They can include transactions that large parts of the network haven’t propagated: resulting in slower block relay, increased orphan risk, and economic inefficiency.
OR… align with the economic majority’s relay policies: ensuring their blocks propagate quickly, maximizing their own revenue and reducing risk.

So if you actually use your node you are exerting economic pressure towards your policies (however small)… not just virtue signaling.