The Redundancy of Full Nodes in Bitcoin: A Network-Theoretic Demonstration of Miner-Centric Propagation Topologies

TL;DR

This paper uses complex network theory to show that full nodes in Bitcoin are peripheral and do not influence transaction propagation, highlighting the miner-centric nature of the network topology.

Contribution

It provides a formal network-theoretic demonstration that full nodes are structurally peripheral and irrelevant for consensus propagation in Bitcoin.

Findings

Full nodes are on the network periphery and do not influence propagation.

Miner clique dominates the propagation topology.

Eigenvalue centrality confirms full nodes' limited role.

Abstract

This paper formally examines the network structure of Bitcoin CORE (BTC) and Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) using complex graph theory to demonstrate that home-hosted full nodes are incapable of participating in or influencing the propagation topology. Leveraging established models such as scale-free networks and small-world connectivity, we demonstrate that the propagation graph is dominated by a densely interconnected miner clique, while full nodes reside on the periphery, excluded from all transaction-to-block inclusion paths. Using simulation-backed metrics and eigenvalue centrality analysis, we confirm that full nodes are neither critical nor operationally relevant for consensus propagation.