Explained: Why Bitcoin users don’t send transactions directly to miners
Many people believe that Bitcoin users typically send their transactions directly to miners or mining pool operators. However, this is actually very uncommon. Instead, users generally broadcast transactions essentially at random — in other words, to whichever nodes happen to be connected to them and online at the time. Usually, a Bitcoin user has no guarantee that a miner will ever see their transaction. They simply hope that random rebroadcasts among volunteer nodes will ping-pong their transaction across the network and eventually, somehow into a miner’s node. This might seem odd and counterintuitive. Why not simply broadcast a transaction directly to a miner as a regular matter of course? Well, the explanation for this curious custom showcases the unique decentralization of the Bitcoin network . A counterintuitive yet effective path to decentralization Miners (or mining pool operators, specifically) select and order transactions within a block. Obviously, these mining operato...