<h1>Confirmation is not Validation</h1>
<h1>Miners are not Adjudicators</h1>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p><strong>How does the 1-CPU-1 vote works</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is no voting system in Bitcoin. There is no counting of votes.</p>
<p>When Nakamoto wrote about voting in the Bitcoin whitepaper, they were using the word in an abstract, almost poetic way, not literally. Just as tigers vote for species of deer by choosing which to eat. Just as potholes vote for makes of car by choosing which to damage. In reality there are no ballot papers, no lists of candidates, no collection and counting of votes.</p>
<p>You could say that nodes vote by choosing which transactions and blocks to pass on and which to discard. That's a pretty weak association of ideas that might have some utility but which can also mislead. Don't make the mistake of thinking there is some more explicit voting system in Bitcoin.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>successful solver of the hash wins the block</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>They don't exactly win the block, but yes generally one miner or pool produces a valid block before the others and their block is most likely to be accepted by all the other nodes in the Bitcoin network.</p>
<p>Someone could loosely describe this as winning the block but I think that sort of vague analogy is completely unhelpful and leads to the sort of confusion about Bitcoin that many people experience.</p>
<p>Some people describe mining as a race but it isn't a race where there is a fixed distance to cover - so that analogy can be misleading.</p>
<p>Some people describe it as like buying lottery tickets, where the more tickets you buy the more chance you have of winning. But it's more like a weekly scratch-card lottery where the revealed text almost always says &quot;you lost&quot; but the first person to find one of many that says &quot;you won&quot; gets the prize and all other unissued scratch-cards are rendered void.</p>
<p>Ultimately these analogies all break down and shouldn't be relied on. They are not the true explanation - they are a simplified story for people who can't or don't want to spend time understanding the subject properly.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>So basically only the single cpu [...] is voting for the entire block</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The successful block is created by one ASIC or other hashing device.</p>
<p>There is no voting or vote counting.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>how is solving the hash saying that all the transactions are valid</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It isn't.</p>
<p>All nodes <em>validate</em> transactions. They don't need miners to do that for them.</p>
<p>Miners are said to <em>confirm</em> transactions. That is because each successive block in the chain is described as a confirmation. Six consecutive blocks is described as six confirmations (not validations).</p>
<p>The confirmation isn't saying the transactions are valid, it is providing proof that the transaction history is increasingly difficult to forge. More confirmations means more certainty the payment is real.</p>
<p>What miners are really doing that is useful for the network is producing an ordering of transactions, a kind of timestamping of transactions. Once everyone agrees on the sequence of transactions, it is then easy to see which transactions are valid and which are invalid because they are attempting to spend money that has already been spent.</p>
<hr />
<p>Related questions:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/148/13866">What exactly is Mining?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/8172/13866">What happens if two miners mine the next block at the same time?</a></li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-02T08:49:15.133Z
In Bitcoin's whitepaper it is mentioned that the network uses 1-CPU-1 vote consensus as proof of work, as the digital identities cannot have voting power such as single user using multiple ip addresses to vote for the validity of the transaction, so the voting is made harder using the scarce resources such as CPU computational power, now if i rephrase my question after your answer: If one miner or one pool produces the block which has all the transactions that are considered to be valid, how do others say that the transaction is valid since only one miner is confirming all the transactions?
Bilal Jawed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-02T08:50:05.110Z
Continuing previous comment, do the other miners have any voting power on the transactions being included in the block? 

Also you said that All nodes validate the transactions, what if I am creating multiple digital identities and saying the transaction is valid? how do miners pick the valid transactions then?
Bilal Jawed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-02T09:38:45.780Z
@Bilal, forget about voting.  Every node validates transactions. No full-nodes accept what any other node consider valid or not. Miners apply the Bitcoin rules to transactions to decide which are valid, just like every other node does.
RedGrittyBrick
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-01T16:01:56.213Z
2021-06-02T09:50:16.047Z
2021-06-02T09:50:16.047Z
RedGrittyBrick
<p>How does the 1-CPU-1 vote works because if we're talking about miners doing computation power to vote, then successful solver of the hash wins the block, so basically only the single cpu (considering its a solo miner in the early days) is voting for the entire block,</p>
<p>secondly how is solving the hash saying that all the transactions are valid when there is only 1 vote who wins the mining block</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>

<bitcoin-core><proof-of-work><consensus>
1-CPU-1 Vote Bitcoin confusion
Bilal Jawed
# 1-CPU-1 Vote Bitcoin confusion

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-06-01)

How does the 1-CPU-1 vote works because if we're talking about miners doing computation power to vote, then successful solver of the hash wins the block, so basically only the single cpu (considering its a solo miner in the early days) is voting for the entire block,

secondly how is solving the hash saying that all the transactions are valid when there is only 1 vote who wins the mining block

Thank you!

**Tags:** bitcoin-core, proof-of-work, consensus


---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-06-01. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

# Confirmation is not Validation

# Miners are not Adjudicators

---

> **How does the 1-CPU-1 vote works**

There is no voting system in Bitcoin. There is no counting of votes.

When Nakamoto wrote about voting in the Bitcoin whitepaper, they were using the word in an abstract, almost poetic way, not literally. Just as tigers vote for species of deer by choosing which to eat. Just as potholes vote for makes of car by choosing which to damage. In reality there are no ballot papers, no lists of candidates, no collection and counting of votes.

You could say that nodes vote by choosing which transactions and blocks to pass on and which to discard. That's a pretty weak association of ideas that might have some utility but which can also mislead. Don't make the mistake of thinking there is some more explicit voting system in Bitcoin.

> **successful solver of the hash wins the block**

They don't exactly win the block, but yes generally one miner or pool produces a valid block before the others and their block is most likely to be accepted by all the other nodes in the Bitcoin network.

Someone could loosely describe this as winning the block but I think that sort of vague analogy is completely unhelpful and leads to the sort of confusion about Bitcoin that many people experience.

Some people describe mining as a race but it isn't a race where there is a fixed distance to cover - so that analogy can be misleading.

Some people describe it as like buying lottery tickets, where the more tickets you buy the more chance you have of winning. But it's more like a weekly scratch-card lottery where the revealed text almost always says "you lost" but the first person to find one of many that says "you won" gets the prize and all other unissued scratch-cards are rendered void.

Ultimately these analogies all break down and shouldn't be relied on. They are not the true explanation - they are a simplified story for people who can't or don't want to spend time understanding the subject properly.

> **So basically only the single cpu [...] is voting for the entire block**

The successful block is created by one ASIC or other hashing device.

There is no voting or vote counting.

> **how is solving the hash saying that all the transactions are valid**

It isn't.

All nodes *validate* transactions. They don't need miners to do that for them.

Miners are said to *confirm* transactions. That is because each successive block in the chain is described as a confirmation. Six consecutive blocks is described as six confirmations (not validations).

The confirmation isn't saying the transactions are valid, it is providing proof that the transaction history is increasingly difficult to forge. More confirmations means more certainty the payment is real.

What miners are really doing that is useful for the network is producing an ordering of transactions, a kind of timestamping of transactions. Once everyone agrees on the sequence of transactions, it is then easy to see which transactions are valid and which are invalid because they are attempting to spend money that has already been spent.

---

Related questions:

* [What exactly is Mining?](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/148/13866)
* [What happens if two miners mine the next block at the same time?](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/8172/13866)

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: In Bitcoin's whitepaper it is mentioned that the network uses 1-CPU-1 vote consensus as proof of work, as the digital identities cannot have voting power such as single user using multiple ip addresses to vote for the validity of the transaction, so the voting is made harder using the scarce resources such as CPU computational power, now if i rephrase my question after your answer: If one miner or one pool produces the block which has all the transactions that are considered to be valid, how do others say that the transaction is valid since only one miner is confirming all the transactions?  
> **username_0**: Continuing previous comment, do the other miners have any voting power on the transactions being included in the block?   Also you said that All nodes validate the transactions, what if I am creating multiple digital identities and saying the transaction is valid? how do miners pick the valid transactions then?  
> **username_1**: @username_0, forget about voting.  Every node validates transactions. No full-nodes accept what any other node consider valid or not. Miners apply the Bitcoin rules to transactions to decide which are valid, just like every other node does.  

---

