&gt; Only miners get a vote, because they validate all blocks.<p>No, everyone validates all blocks. (Or at least they theoretically should.) Otherwise you could get miners lying about whether they&#x27;ve validated a block. Changing the Bitcoin protocol is essentially creating an altcoin - the only difference is that the money distribution is &quot;pre-seeded&quot; with everything that&#x27;s happened on the Bitcoin network so far. If all users move along, the altcoin succeeds and the &quot;original&quot; Bitcoin fails.<p>If everyone except the current miners decided to follow new rules, the miners would be forced to follow - there&#x27;s not much point mining a currency which nobody will accept in exchange for goods, services or other currency.