@rewan The non-cracked servers thing is not due a modification to the .jar file, it's just that it's launched without connecting the user info. TLauncher is effectively the same as launching the game in offline mode.

Sodium is a modification but it does not affect the game behavior.

@TheNetherFrogGaming it's nothing like an emulator though, and therefore shouldn't be counted as one

@rewan and @bob_chicken if I steal someone's computer and get a world record on it, that doesn't make my record invalid. Sure, that would unethical, but that's irrelevant. The point of SRC is to list all legit speedruns so we can keep track of records and such - how the runner got access to the game is irrelevant.

TLauncher launches the same .jar file as the regular Minecraft launcher (i.e. the game is the same). Hence, runs done in it would be legit. In contrast, Badlion is not allowed as it launches a modified .jar file.

Comparing 1.8 performance to 1.16 performance is unfair, especially since you're comparing playing on servers to playing locally. 1.16 is more hardware intensive than 1.8, and playing on a server is less hardware intensive than locally speedrunning. You should be comparing speedrunning on 1.16 vanilla against speedrunning on 1.16 with sodium et al.

Something of note:

Sodium (specifically, not Lithium) does apply some graphical fixes to Vanilla. For instance:

These are not generally advantageous to spedruns (fitting with the rules for texture packs), but may be worth noting.