Bitcoin Miners

Bitcoin miners secure the network by performing proof-of-work. They repeatedly hash candidate blocks until one produces a result that meets the current difficulty target. The first miner to find a valid block broadcasts it to the network. Other nodes verify the block. If it is valid, they accept it and begin working on the next one. This process is what orders transactions and makes rewriting history expensive.

Miners are paid in two ways: the block subsidy (newly created bitcoin) and transaction fees. The subsidy decreases over time through the halving schedule. Mining is competitive. Success depends on the amount of computational work performed relative to the rest of the network. Specialized hardware known as ASICs is now required to mine profitably at scale. Most individual participants do not mine. Mining is an optional activity; running a full node is sufficient to use the network.

Miners do not control the rules. Nodes enforce the consensus rules independently. A miner that produces a block violating those rules will have its block rejected by honest nodes. The economic incentive is to follow the rules and produce valid blocks, because invalid blocks earn no reward. This separation between proposing blocks and enforcing rules is a core feature of the system’s design.