All good questions, all of which are answered in the white paper. An &quot;elected leader&quot; is essentially the same thing as a miner that mines a block in Bitcoin. Miners can mine empty blocks in Bitcoin. This is OK, as others will step in for such defunct miners. Likewise, in Bitcoin-NG, another miner will step up if the elected leader does not mint microblocks.<p>Keep in mind also that NG would be layered on top of Bitcoin, so everything that works in Bitcoin will work in NG as well.