ok so the OP is not actually trying to describe or learn PoW
nor wanting to learn how bitcoin uses PoW

but wants to instead make a whole different system where PoW means something completely different.. as thats how i am reading his posts now
where he wants to create a new system without first understanding how the current system works

..
so here goes another attempt at explaining the current system
PoW is not about "selecting proposals"  or selecting a president who controls the network..
PoW is just doing a complicated method of using electric and computational time to create a strong ID that fixes the contents of a block. whereby it would take someone else more electric to go back and change that block and afix a new block ID to the changed data.. and then try to do the same for the next newest block to overtake the leading blockheight to become the valid blocks usernodes read and follow.
which to even be capable of doing this and consistantly win every block requires alot more electric spent than the entire networks worth of mining hardware

PoW has nothing to do with changing rules. its about securing the DATA inside a block with a strong and expensive ID for the blocks contents of transactions
and that is it in a nutshell
if a malicious pool owner with such massive amount of hardware to achieve repeated winning blocks. all he can ultimately do is just select (be picky) about what transactions to include or not

separately from PoW
changing the rules(proposals) requires having a majority of user nodes, or more importantly the nodes used by businesses and serives using your changed rules code.. to THEN accept blocks that may contain a new format.
meaning you need to convince user nodes to adopt your code first.. BEFORE a new block format would be accepted

thus 2 separate activities

as for who wins the block creation. its not about nodes randomly accepting something(being picky).
its about nodes receiving something random
 
its the mining pool that manages to solve the puzzle with enough difficulty faster than its opponent, and if the block meets the rules. then that is accepted as the winner

because there is a bit of 'randomness' in the blockID creation. its not always the pool with the most hashpower that wins every time.

dumbing it down by (whatever the term is for several factors above Vigintillion)
one pools attempt at making a block might be searching for the number 987654(xVigintillion)
while another pool is searching for the number 1234(xVigintillion) where the end result needs to when converted to hex have a prefix of a certain amount of zeros

their next attempts would be a different number where a different pool has to find a lower number meaning it gets to win even though other pools might have more hashpower their number this time they need to find is higher thus needing more time to find it

i must laugh
@doomad
try to read the 2017 blockdata of the flags
compare the flags to the codes that inspire the flags

its immutable so even i cant edit it..
the flags speak for themselves as to the events that transpired. heck you were even given the data in a pretty picture format which you keep forgetting to look at and realise where you go wrong.. oh and for years core devs have said it was a UAHF. not the 3 different narratives you play out and confuse people with where it just shows you have not done any research, checks on event, nor understand what things actually mean
but its your flip flop bait and switch narrative style. so no surprise

you have been told to look many many times. but you have not bothered.
heck the buddies you hand your crap scripts to, to repeat.. like a chior singing group..  are actually seeing passed your blind scripts and looking for themselves and they are noticing your narrative is the false one

oh and your silly screen shot.. is not people writing their own node. its copying the CORE code

guess you dont know the difference between a diverse network of different brands wrote in different languages.. but writing their own code to meed certain rulesets.. vs just taking core code.

oh and yes i have seen your REKT campaigns of treating any brand that is not core as an enemy and not part of the diverse variety of a decentralised network

.. and yes YOU have said "make you own brand" but you then emphasise that people should fork the blockchain off to an altcoin and then see who folows...
which is not how the consensus network works. even though you think consensus is about rejecting blocks and nodes opposing core roadmap before core activates, to ensure core activates unopposed..

your preference is not how consensus worked 2009-2016. but your prefered method is the way YOU want it to work now even if it is centralising

they dont lose control
CB still have control. the main circulating currency is done via tax, debt, min wage LAWS

what your confused about is the citizen level savings/spending.. which is not central bank control. its the commercial bank service
central banks dont care about that. they only care about making profit at the top end. which they can increasingly do by ridding the 3rd layer services like visa/mastercard and just have a 2 layer system of central-commercial banks

anyway
central banks have wanted to invest in crypto (for their internal investments of corporate profit). central banks dont offer citizen accounts. of fiat or cbdc or crypto. never have
central banks want to hold crypto but were stopped by the IMF/BIS. but that looks to change in 2025

..
separately from that. at the commercial-citizen level. we are seeing big institutions offering crypto gateways/investment schemes and such

we will see more of blackrock/ark doing deals for trusts, mining and exchanging, both at public spot(CEXand DEX) and also at private OTC

now getting to this topics point
while some call grayscale a killer whale. there are bigger whales(blue/humpback) such as ark/blackrock that would love to take over DCG's positions

funny part was the CBDC trials were not about millions of customers with billions of value
.. oh but hang on weight a minute
wasnt LN 7 years ago promoted as the solution to bitcoin scaling to allow millions of users to put their value and transact perfectly..
.. 7 years, and LN still bottlenecks with 16,000 users who only want to spend $800 each on average(1ml stats)

again you fail to even research things, you just want to reply with NO DATA and just stupid speculated crap that came out of your head.

and banks didnt invest in all that infrastructure

they actually got the silly blockstream and ethereum devs to volunteer out open source code(hyperledger committee and consultation groups)

maybe try to actually see what is outside your echo chamber of LN and see what other bridge network systems exist..

there are hundreds of them.. whilst you fools want everyone to patiently wait a few more years for LN promises..

responding to blackhat below
there is a thing called google. its this thing that operates as a search engine.. you type some words in of things you want to find. and googles lists it.

maybe start with words like hyperledger BIS CBDC
need to be spoonfed anymore? or can you learn to feed yourself yet
heck ill give you a tip of the spoon lick.. this forum has a search function and my post history too. you can find the answers easily. as i have explained them before as have others.

separate observation:
funny how you skipped over and avoided things like the other crypto bridge subnetworks launches but didnt want to talk about Ln's  failure to launch

proposals should not be "procesed"/filered/moderated within one brand/group that has all the power of moderation at every level and is also then made to be the main reference client. as thats centralisation

if there is to be moderations. let the moderators not be the same guys that also control the code merges of the centralised code brand. make it independent and not incentivised censorship mechanism to push one agenda forward and ignore all other opportunities

there SHOULD also be multiple full node brands. and they are all offered the ability to make and SHARE proposals. where they all offer a implementation so that people can stick with their favoured brand but have a choice that includes proposed code. and when there is a majority then it activates knowing there is a safe tolerance of alot of peer nodes with the actual proposed code able to actually verify a new ruleset, without having silly "isvalid" defaults for unupgraded nodes to bypass verification

the issues with relying on all proposals being filtered through one brand moderation and developer group, is the other brands become second tier nodes, following as an after effect rather then being at the same level as a certain brand

EG
imagine there was a new proposal by any brand. and all brands are show it. then all brands develop their brands version with the proposal and a same version without the proposal(flag default on or off)

brand C 25.0.P(bug fix code + proposal code + flag default on)
brand C 25.0.1(bug fix code + flag default off)
where P is brand C's node with proposal code included. and .0.1 is just the normal bug fix version without proposal

brand L 25.0.P
brand L 25.0.1
where P is brand L's node with proposal code included. and .0.1 is just the normal bug fix version without proposal

it also helps to have 2 codebases per version..  if a proposal is buggy, malicious, not voted to activate. the brands can continue work on the 0.01 versions without having to re write/undo.remove their proposal code if it is not activated

and they can instead just work on the next proposal. without having to undo code  to get back to status quo

this then allows them to not be soo determined to push or force activations and instead easily say "ok people dont like that idea lets listen to what they do want and tweak things to meet community need".. instead of it took 2 years to write this and will take another 6 months to remove the code to get back to uncludgy status. so we need to force an activation., purely out of time irritations"

the main reasons are that industrial mining farms do not pay bills by the week or month, using coin they mined that week or month. they have better business models that that silly whimsical game of cat and mouse bill paying game..

they pre-buy electric contracts for 6-24 months(ahead) at a fixed rate, meaning better bulk purchase prices than normally offered to monthly bill payers

this means the 2022 residential electric price rises have not affected the industrial miners YET
so their cost average is still at early 2022 electric levels of the industrial grid prices

how they account their BTC cost is not done as a weekly/monthly event either
they know they will continually mine for a couple years at X rate electric. and their hardware they run for a couple years before selling second hand to then buy new gen efficient equipment. so they work in periods of 1-2 years depending on contract deals

so they calculate their costs at the start of the 1-2 years. and they then see how much coin they accumulated after 1-2 years and THEN set their cost per coin of that allotment.

they are not selling the coins they just mined. they sell the previous periods coins (deflation means they profit by selling older coins first)

so this is why, even though their coin production halved in:
2012 the markets didnt shift until 2013
2016 the markets didnt shift until 2017
2020 the markets didnt shift until 2021

he is just making a claim that NFT are worth $1500 minimum. to set peoples minds into thinking thats what they are worth

one word:
GREED

fun fact
signatures are now called witnesses
segregating them is actually one of the features segwit enabled nodes can offer
they even have 2 txid's and merkle trees for exactly this function

(it really does pay to read some code and understand the word "segretated witness")

yes
unupgraded nodes that do not understand segwit will have a stripped block not containing the witness(signatures)
(the stripped blocks are filtered to non-segwit nodes from a segwit enabled node doing the stripping for the non segwit node)

it required alot of cludgy code to do this "backward compatible " data striping feature, where it required segwit enabled nodes to do the stripping if they had unupgraded peers connected to them.

pushing the unupgraded peers to the outer hops of the relay network where they dont get to be the normal class of nodes validating everything


..
oh and NO one said all blocks dont have signatures any more. NO one
its just another misdirection social game.
the actual debates were that non segwit nodes lost their "full node status" by being handled differently given a different lump of data than a segwit enabled node got

as many people should know
99.99% of NFT are not worth what they are marketted at

its simple as previous over priced marketted things:
selling a UK 50p coin for £50 on ebay, where, emphasis: the seller and buyer are the same person. to set a fake over priced amount and fake demand. then find a sucker to pay similar price for something worth only 50p

when you look at a NFT find a compatible real world example to price discover real value

EG a college guy doing street art cartoons using ink on canvas in tourist locations. where they draw unique pieces for each paying tourist (milkshake amount or restaurant 'meal for 2' sort of amount)

that said NFT do have some real good functionality. for when NFT are used properly. but dont be blinded by the silly market prices silly people promote

other bridging subnetworks managed it in less than a year.
LN took over 2.3 years

heck even banks testing out CBDC managed 1m payments in a 3month trial

bitcoin does ~1700 tx per 10mins
meaning 1million in 4 days

oh and bitcoin itself initially took 2 years from birth because
emphasis: it had no existing fame nor crypto userbase to steal/offramp from.. yet with all the LN promo "is bitcoin" phishing/ co branding.. Ln didnt even manage to grow quicker then bitcoins launch

and no this is not a time for you folk to campaign a spam session of sending/ creating meaningless payment events like a game of tennis to fake payment counts

5 controversial dangerous proposals are and were:

1. changing the consensus mechanism from consent by mass survey(dictionary and byzantine generals solution definitions), to instead activate with less network peer requirement, where its a "abstinence is consent" model, introduced by a core'poral rather then any decentralised 'generals'

2. having mechanisms to reject blocks, and ban peers that do not flag for an activation prior to activation. this falsifies any consensus(consent) count

3. proposal of so called "privacy features" such as:
a. to break the UTXO spend chain of custody movement(remove taint via non accountable tx format) - removing the proof of origins means it cant be proved coins were originally mined, thus opening up risk of creating new coin outside the mining process and also taking coin without ownership permission
b. wanting to put features like mimblewimble on the mainnet rather than a safer 'extended'(side/sub) network/chain

4. increasing the shareable units.
this requires bad code to separate legacy/native value from future format value where the cross overs could bug and cause new coin creation or coin destruction out of circulation, changes the halving cycles and also changes the ultimate maximum units ever mined rules

5. proposing YEARS ago that subnetworks will be the payment utility of all bitcoiners to save the mainnet from being the payment network. whilst years later those subnetworks have still not met their promises to meet the functionality nor capability to handle real usage beyond pizza value amounts, and even those are not 100% guaranteed, secure. yet we still have to "wait and see" before scaling bitcoin (scaling not leaping)

you lot BS alot of fiction using social drama..

i however use statistics. data, code..
it is not me that needs to concede.. code and data speaks for itself
funny how the LN crowd prefer social media taunts

its you that needs to look outside your fluffy promotion material of empty promise. and actually learn something

have you tried yet? nope. and so the rhetoric of your Ln flock/folks false claims continue because all you lot can do is snake oil sale unmet hope and dreams. thus i need to keep poking you lot with reminders. reminders of things that can be backed up by stats, data, until you are ready to observe

i do laugh that you think im the only one

even though statistics show that people would rather lock btc value up and then use other bridge subnetworks. rather then LN

but you will ignore those stats

---

also i talk on this forum about a heck of alot of different topics
you only notice the LN ones because they hurt you soo much so they stick in your head like PTSD

maybe try to be prepared to learn rather then defend the silly network that had 7 years to prove it can meet its promises, but failed

so come on can you even remember what LN promises were. and if they were achieved.. come on. atleast try to have a good LN specific data debate to reply with and not a social drama name call

..
edit to reply to below
well everything you lot say about LN has been said before so your own advice is you dont need to keep snake oil selling it in multiple topics

funny part is i reveal more issues and you lot cant even debate them and only want to silence me. which is not even a method of discussion

oh and did i ever mention the stats of other bridging subnetworks offering similar features before this week. nope. but your folks lack of observations and preference of ignorance has been plentiful. you dont even want to be aware of certain things, which is not even good policy for your own risk awareness of flaws, let alone to realise what your are advertising to others, nor how shameful your dreamy and hope adverts have become

so again the challenge. can you lot even remember LN's promises. and can you factually prove those promises have been met aft 7 years of you lot waiting

7 years............. yawn
   still flawed YAWN
imagine if bitcoin network was released in 2009. and in 2016 only had maybe 16,000 users playing around with only 5200 coins between them. where it was bottle necking
for even amounts of say $30 and above

would you say bitcoin was a success.. or a failure to launch

---

other development teams have seen the flaws of LN, seen which flaws wont and cant ever be patched. and instead started on their own bridge subnetworks. and those networks which are less than 2 years old have more liquidity in them

so if 7 years is not the date to call it a day. when will you call it a day

LN is not the solution, devs need to start a fresh subnetwork that actually functions and does what the wider community want and need. or just let bitcoin scale instead of this endless stalling tactic of "be patient"

i dont use ethereum(never have) or their co-branded, subset protocols of their subnetwork bridges(that also bridge to bitcoin)
and yet they are gaining alot more traction than LN

im a bitcoin maximalist. but friggen hell i do do my research with eyes wide open and not in dreams and hopes.

and im not happy with the silly games being played in bitcoin dev politics/corporate sponsorships of bitcoin devs pushing things that are not helping bitcoin grow but just stalling progress with YEARS of empty promises of solutions that are never met

---

ok heres a rationalisation (eye opening opportunity) challenge for you folk
can you lot even remember, lets say the top 3 "solutions for bitcoin" Ln was promoting back in the 2015-17 days

if so reply with them and your opinions of if they have been met or not

core dont care because their proposals are now all "backward compatible" meaning those that dont upgrade just get a passive, stripped version which just lets new features in as "is valid" without doing full verification

remember how much ceremony and promotion was needed to hype up of taproot proposal to get people interested to upgrade just to activate taproot.. nope? coz there was none.
it didnt need a majority of users to upgrade to activate it..  core bypassed what you speak of..

core have flipped consensus upside down. they have not used satoshis 2009-2016 version of consensus since 2017
(the 2009-16 true version of consensus was a byzantine generals solution.. now its a single 'core'poral in charge)

now new features are treated as "is valid" and accepted without rejection. whereby un-upgraded nodes are not allowed to say no and prevent activation. they instead are pushed out to the edges of the network, and handed data thats stripped or set to just blind accept. and are not completely validating full data.  or rejected off the network,
where they if they choose.. they can upgrade just to again start validating full data that has been pushed into activation without a consensus (consent by mass survey) event of majority activation principles

reading the last few posts
in summary. dont just blind trust a forum post or tweet

research. find the source data behind the social narrative
RESEARCH

---

here are some prime examples of bad "trust" of stuff people read

a. a certain person used mining stats of a website who's "methodology explainer" uses the words guestimate, assumption, average far too much

b. those that thought el-salv citizens were getting real onchain btc in sept-dec 2021 but reality was a chivo balance using flawed LN msat redemption being phished as being bitcoin(which is where elsalv failed in its citizen utilising bitcoin adoption..) and stalled their opportunity to bring bitcoin to the masses in 2022 by being conned into using LN instead of the bitcoin network in late 2021
the president has been spending the whole year of 2022 trying to sort out some proper deals and provisions and protocols and stuff that are bitcoin related which seem to now be coming out in the open

most of the popular sub/side networks are not bitcoin only features

they are bridge networks allowing multiple mainnet blockchain value to be offramped. taking users away from using the mainnets of multiple blockchains and into another network of having to trust their value with

take a few examples
the ones phished as "is bitcoin" can bridge to multiple networks like litecoin and others.. and DO..(there is proof, so not a myth)

but the amount of liquidity pegged to these bitcoin phished bridges(LN/liquid) is far less then say alot of ERC protocol subnetwork bridge to bitcoin

for instance
wbtc has 173,000 btc pegged
btc.b has 5700 btc pegged

however LN has only 5272
and liquid has 3567
..

many people are soo irritated and peed off with the 7 years of waiting for the supposed promised of "LN is the solution to scaling utility" and how flawed and broken those promises are. they end up using other bridges that are phishing with within the ethereum pond

and i am not going to get into the silly hypocrisy of doomads reverse play on his own politics which are the opposite of what he is trying to be onside with now.
he is too late to pretend he is for the things he now suggests after years of being oppositional to it

1. even if the movement window was just 0.1x (10% a year) its still better than any interest savings account fiat banks can offer

2.even 300 years after "tulip mania" people still buy and sell tulips(go check any garden centre, yep those businesses still make profit selling tulips)

3.its not volatile right now due to whales or sharks. its actually being suppressed -resisted because of whales/sharks. yep suppressed-resisted from being the wide international sentiment of speculation. but their activities only work for 1-8 week periods at a time

i guess he had reasons to want to keep funds on legacy and not move them to segwit via seeded passphrase hardware wallet

i found that a surprising revelation too at the end of new year after his endless segwit promoting activity years prior

even i wonder what his reasons were for someone so segwit "pro" to avoid using it and prefer to hoard coin on legacy
his big mistake was not using legacy, it was re-using the same wallet from september-december thus exposing the keys to his online home-use PC

i know commonly OG's like to keep funds on known OG addresses as a form of trophy display of being able to long-hoard without moving. it could be that
or that segwit fails to do good "sign message"/validate message features in core
along with other unfinished things they forgot about to finalise full use of segwit functionality

nope

block creation is not that at all
(sticking with YOUR election analogy(poor analogy but lets go with it))

imagine everyone puts a tick on a ballot(a transaction)
and posts it to whatever polling count centre is available . near them
where multiple counting stations get it. but only one instance can be deemed valid

the polling centre collates said cards/tx. and counts them up. and puts them into a batch

*they then run it through a machine that costs alot of electric to give that batch an ID*
*this* stage of costly batch ID creation is the POW

then when there is a secure enough batch ID to preserve the cards/tx data from being tampered with

the polling data of that specific counting station is released to the public. where the public validate its secure.
the next polling counting station. then batches up some cards/tx not already validated and uses that already public batch ID of the latest publicly aware batch ID within its batch collation. and then *the PoW* process is done on that batch
thus having a chain of batches of polling cards preceding each other

and again released to the public
the public can then see which votes(data) voted for x or y candidate (or pay whomever tx destination is) and you can see the results are confirmed 2016times a fortnight(~10 minutes each) as polling centres release their batches throughout the day

anyone can then tally up results at any time to see who has most votes at any given ~10min period

the thing is.. there is no stopping the polling. meaning yes satoshi may have held onto 1million votes out of 19m votes for 14 years and micheal saylor may have only 135,000 votes in last 2 years and greyscale might have been growing its vote count to 635,000 votes over 10 years and binance might have 575000 votes

but as the polls are continual. they can change futuristically in 10 minutes. rather than 4 years. and cant change retrospectively(its possible but cost prohibative to do such, thus you dont really see it get done)

..
Pow is not about changing votes retrospectively(by itself. POW does not read or write polling cards). nor about keeping votes a secret for 4 year term. nor about the PoW being related to editing votes when received(again PoW is not about reading polling cards).
(a malicious polling count station, could if it had enough power to outpace the other poll card collating centres, could produce an empty batch(management decision not related to PoW). thus holding up/delaying any change of majority by having nothing to count for a period.
but thats not PoW caused.. thats bad management of selecting to not fill their batch BEFORE using PoW to secure an empty batch

PoW is about securing a batch ID of collated votes(or empty boxes). which then is a proof of confirmation they are then counted and locked(or nothing new occured) and treated as valid locked positions at that given time

if a polling count centre had more cost/power then its competing count stations. it could go back and make its own pile of empty batches or batches of collated votes it favours(again not POW related but management decision) and then make the batch ID's faster then competing stations. to overtake them and re-org the results
(costly endeaver that can easily be rejected by other mechanism, thus not worth attempting)

...
why i say its a poor analogy to compare to elections
is if treating btc as votes. satoshi has remained president with most majority votes for 14 years, even when elections that could change who has what btc every 10 minutes
meaning elections can swing to a new vote majority leader any time
(EG a merger of greyscale and binance) where they show they have more btc/votes than satoshi by co-mingling their coin

which has nothing to do with PoW and PoW has nothing to do with election counting.. just batch securing an ID of a the count of recent vote changes

"renting" hashpower is never profitable. if it were the OWNERS would not rent out but just mine for self profit


remote hosting equipment you bought, can reduce your costs by hosting it in a cheaper country compared to your home. but still be aware of their hosting/management fee's and also any terms/conditions about what they do with your hardware once it arrives at their warehouses.
(check out the core scientific-celsius shinanigans). corz raised its rates above the us state electric average and held celsius hardware to ransom until celsius paid its fee's which celsius disagreed with