Empty block
69 sats \ 2 comments \ @famisbtc 19 May bitcoin
I was thinking about what I could write a small post about, to contribute a bit of value, and suddenly, while checking the mempool, I came across an empty block.
This happens because miners are incentivized to mine blocks as quickly as possible, and sometimes they mine a block before receiving any transactions to include. When this happens, the block remains empty.
By mining empty blocks, miners continue to produce the coin generation transaction, also known as the coinbase transaction, which keeps Bitcoin steady on its path to reaching the 21 million Bitcoin issued.
Did you know that empty blocks existed? What's your opinion about it?
I'll leave you the image of the recently mined empty block number 844144.
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preview
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131 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount 19 May
Miners sometimes get lucky and find an empty block in the interim period before having the full template however this is rarely the reason for empty blocks as it's such a small amount of time.
The usual cause is that some mining hardware will continue to work on old work for up to 60 seconds despite having newer work available. This is also why when comparing "Actual Blocks" with "Expected Blocks" on mempool.space you will often observe slightly lower fees in the blocks found than what's theoretically possible
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @famisbtc OP 19 May
I couldn't have explained it better myself. Thanks for complementing the post! ✌️
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