I’ve been thinking a lot about Proof-of-Work lately, not from the perspective of ideology, but from the perspective of mechanics.
Most explanations describe mining as a race. Hash power competes, blocks are found, rewards are distributed. That description is accurate, but incomplete. There’s a quieter part of the process that feels underexplored: what actually happens inside a block before it exists.
Between a transaction being broadcast and a block being mined, there is a gray zone. The mempool lives there.
At first glance, the mempool looks like a simple queue — transactions waiting their turn. But the more time I spend observing it, the less it resembles a line and the more it feels like a set of probabilities. Nothing in the mempool is final. Everything is tentative.
And yet, decisions are already being made.
Mining Is Not Fully Mechanical
Proof-of-Work is often framed as neutral computation. Whoever finds the block first wins. But that framing ignores something subtle: miners choose what goes into the block they are trying to find.
When blocks are empty, the choice doesn’t matter.
When blocks are full, it does.
Two miners can be solving the same puzzle, at the same time, with the same difficulty — and still be working on different versions of the future. Different transaction sets. Different orders. Different outcomes.
That realization changes how you think about mining. It’s not just energy converted into security. It’s also discretion, even if that discretion is rarely discussed.
Ordering Changes Outcomes
Transaction ordering feels like a detail until it isn’t.
Some transactions depend on others.
Some fail if the state changes first.
Some create opportunities only if they execute before something else does.
In those cases, order isn’t cosmetic. It’s causal.
Miners don’t need to fully understand every consequence to notice patterns. Higher fees rise to the top. Certain sequences resolve cleanly. Others don’t. Over time, you can see which blocks “work better.”
Nothing here feels malicious. It feels evolutionary.
Given a choice, rational actors prefer blocks that are less likely to break and more likely to pay.
The Mempool as Early Information
What’s interesting is that all of this happens before confirmation.
The mempool exposes intent without guaranteeing execution. It’s a preview layer — incomplete, noisy, but useful.
If you’re paying attention, you can see demand forming. You can see contention. You can see where users are racing against each other without realizing it.
This makes the system feel less like a static ledger and more like a live market. One where timing, visibility, and anticipation matter.
I don’t think we’ve fully grappled with the implications of that yet.
Proof-of-Work Aligns Incentives — But Not Perfectly
Proof-of-Work does a remarkable job of aligning security with cost. Attacking the network is expensive. Honesty is rewarded. That part works.
But inside those incentives, there are degrees of freedom.
Block construction isn’t specified down to the last detail. The protocol defines validity, not optimality. That leaves room for behavior to evolve.
I suspect we’re only beginning to understand how miners will adapt as transaction volume grows and blocks become consistently full.
An Open Question
None of this feels like a flaw. It feels like a natural consequence of turning economics into software.
When systems expose choice, participants learn to use it.
When systems expose information early, someone learns to read it.
The mempool is not just a waiting room.
It’s a signal.
What we choose to do with that signal — and how much discretion block producers should have — feels like an open question we haven’t really answered yet.
Maybe we don’t need to.
Or maybe, a few years from now, this will become one of the most important parts of the system.
For now, it’s just something worth paying attention to.
