NODE / MINESOURCE-LED COMPARISONS
Bitcoin full node vs miner: who enforces the rules?
Separate transaction validation and consensus enforcement from proof-of-work block production.
Miners propose blocks and order transactions. Fully validating nodes independently reject any block that breaks the consensus rules. Hashrate cannot make an invalid block valid.
Validates blocks and transactions against the rules selected by its operator.
Builds candidate blocks and competes to attach proof of work.
Bandwidth, storage and computation for verification.
Specialised hardware, electricity and access to block templates.
Normally no protocol-level payment for validation.
Block subsidy and transaction fees when a valid block is accepted.
Rejects invalid history but does not choose which valid miner wins.
Chooses transaction ordering in its candidate block but cannot rewrite validation rules alone.
The phrase “miners secure Bitcoin” is incomplete. Proof of work makes history costly to replace; nodes determine whether that history is valid under the rules they run.