Topic: Empty blocks - page 4. (Read 23015 times)

This is where your morals as a miner and ultimately a human being who has an impact on the Bitcoin Ecosystem and by proxy the world and you must make a decision to support pools who mine empty blocks when there are plenty of transactions waiting to be handled.

These pools who choose to spv mine and mine 0 transaction blocks do not deserve anyone's loyalty because of the choices they make. The people who make the decisions for these pools do not care about the future of bitcoin outside of what it makes for them tomorrow. They do not care if in 10, 20, or 50 years bitcoin is worthless, they do not use their profits to help the miners, they do not give their time to help the ecosystem, they only care about them, and supporting such is complete greed and a lack of a moral compass.

Now when I say morals I am not talking about something as complicated as a religious discussion. I do not mean a philosophical expression which one could contemplate for weeks, I am talking about the difference between black and white, good and bad,  dirty or clean, being a thief, or doing the best someone can to treat others as they want to be treated.

This is about as simple as any conversation or debate could be and anyone denying that mining an empty block when there are valid transactions waiting to be processed does not have reality in their sights.

F2pool will tell you they are just a bunch of geeks trying to get by but what they will not tell you is that they collude with a couple of other of the largest pools which exist to provide each other with block confirmations in China before the rest of the world has an opportunity.

What you should ask yourself is have you shown yourself you cannot make just as much if not more coin by mining at a pool which does not mine zero transaction blocks. People could make just as much money and help the network grow while securing it for the future by mining at pools who do not spv mine and mine zero transaction blocks.

There are many things allowed by code. Just because the code doesn't stop you from doing something doesn't mean it is something you should do. We all know the people contributing to bitcoin core have immense amounts of things to address and they should do so with the interest of the network security and longevity at heart.

We have already had forks because of the spv mining and we see transactions skipped by the largest pools every single day. Does anyone think this will translate to helping the network grow? If so, please explain how not processing transactions will help bitcoin? The more people who sit waiting for a transaction to process then the more people we have thinking that bitcoin isn't all good and well. The more miners who grow frustrated seeing those same pools grow larger begin to question bitcoin as well. Eventually things like this can be a breaking point and this is where morals can come into play.

Imagine you have provided all of the miners on the bitcoin network a fantastic sum of money to do nothing but continue mining wherever they choose, as long as it helps the network grow and provides the security to do so. Removing the economic reason for mining and place all decision making on the individual miner to choose the pool they mine at not based on how much coin they make, but how much they think that particular pool will help bitcoin grow and trust the pool owners / operators to make the best decisions for the bitcoin network.
What do you think the hashrate charts would look like then? Anything similar to today's distribution?

Again, consider these things yourself, consider the choices you have made and continue to make regarding a variety of things in life. Isn't it always better in the long run to do the right thing?
If it wasn't right no one would care. If I hadn't seen these things first-hand, if I hadn't been exposed to the pure greed which drives one of the biggest pools I wouldn't care. If I hadn't been shown the empty blocks and began to do my own research, began to ask my own questions and also have a natural curiosity to question the status quo I literally would never post about it because it wouldn't matter.

Please don't take my word for it. Look at these things on your own and if you care that bitcoin puts its best foot forward to the world then start by showing them that bitcoin is based on people who make decisions to better the bitcoin community for the long haul. Allowing F2pool and Antpool to continue mining with these tactics shows the corporate world this is a simple extension of their banking system for the taking, and that is exactly what is happening. As more control flows to these central locations even if the power was never used (imagine a company having power over bitcoin and not abusing it), even if those companies didn't choose to perform further acts which harm the community while filling their pockets they have the opportunity to do so.

Maybe a different viewpoint will help some people, and if you are driven by pure greed then at least be a person who stands up for what they believe in and sincerely open your eyes to long term growth. Where do we go at this pace? More new miners join those pools because they are the largest and those pools continue to get larger. You may get daily payouts (albeit much smaller payouts than other pools), but that is short sighted, you can still make just as much if not much more mining at a pool which is not setup to spit out zero transaction blocks.

Someone mining for the act of purely making more coin can even see that as those pools grow larger and gather more power they position themselves to control the network. Consider BIP101. It doesn't matter if you supported it or not, but the fact that F2pool and Antpool could push the network to BIP101 if they choose to do so is not at all what any true supporter of bitcoin would ever choose, much less someone mining for pure profit. Because they originally were quoted as saying they would support a revision of BIP101 but then did not do so, and regardless of the exact semantics why on earth would anyone want to see such an immense amount of control over the complete bitcoin universe in the hands of a small group of people who have shown consistently they only care about themselves.

What choices do we always see greedy corporations make once they become a monopoly? They make choices that make them more money. ...And who supplies the additional income for them above what they are making now? The very customers who provided them with the ability to become that monopoly. We do not live in a fair world and I think most miners know this. Regardless of the fact that some of us (myself included) may enjoy the occasional immature joke, or even act immature when calling out someone on the forum, we know right from wrong and when removing ourselves mentally from the situation enough to think clearly can see what is happening.
Those of us old enough to remember other monopolies, or the people who see the ones standing today as the local cable company and AT&T work together to make sure you pay out the wazoo every month for less than half or worse of the internet speeds and caps of the rest of the world, well, I know that if I'd understood this twenty five years ago I would not have continued to give those companies my money. The majority of miners are doing the same thing today. Do we need governments telling us where to mine? Do we need the governments who have proven repeatedly not to have our best interests at heart telling us where to point our hash. Because if / when the government gets involved the only monopoly is theirs. They may let F2pool keep the name, but they certainly will no longer have control. But we are a long way from anything like that. We have many years of the monopoly of the few before we get to that extreme, and we have the opportunity to make a choice.

You may quietly continue pointing your hash at a pool where you think you make more money for whatever reason regardless of how it impacts the network and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Actually, you are part of the majority by continuing to do so. You may quietly kick back and only care about today, and you may even have yourself convinced that your hashrate doesn't matter. Hell they already have so many PH of the network it doesn't matter what you choose, you may be heading out the door to go out on Friday night and spend some of your coin and you don't have time for what you see is a trivial thing that has no bearing on you.
... Just like casting a vote, it matters more than you will understand until you no longer have a choice.

Take a few minutes, say 20 minutes and read some of the opinions of the people on this forum who are posting about these scenarios. JohnyBravo doesn't have a dog in this fight in the manner of pool versus pool, but look at his opinions. I've followed JB's posts on a couple of different forums and firmly believe he has a good handle on the bitcoin landscape from the home miner perspective. He has nothing to lose or gain by making the statements he does regarding zero transaction mining. Why would he display his research and opinion, or spend his time delving into things such as this if it weren't fact.
I would not care what any pool did if it didn't harm the future of this gorgeous creation called bitcoin. I know I am pretty much small potatoes as miners go but through everything I've learned about bitcoin is to some people it is their personal money making machine and nothing more. They care about today and into tomorrow. They care about keeping the cash train rolling, but they do not have the goal of changing the financial world forever and leveling the playing field, they do not care about the people paying hundreds of millions of dollars in remittance fees, the people who have to spend 5, 7, or even 10 to 20 % of their minimum wage paycheck just to send money back home so their family can eat while they try to save up enough money to move their family to their new country.

There will only be a few people who make real money with bitcoin and it will not be the miners. I hate to break it to the people who think they will be millionaires from mining coin but unfortunately those of us who weren't around a few years ago are catching the tail end of what could be a beautiful thing.  This is because the more control those pools gain, the less people will be convinced this is a secure system. See, it doesn't matter if the actual miners are decentralized if all of the hashrate is going to 2 or 3 pools who work in collusion with each other. They have the ability to do all sorts of evil deeds with it, and you haven't began to understand the mindsets involved if you do not think they will use that power to gain even more power. It is as obvious as the sky being blue and if miners do not wake up and begin making choices to turn this car around none of the other small stuff is hardly worth consideration. It doesn't matter what BIPs are implemented, it doesn't matter if the core programmers make any changes, and it doesn't matter what the price of bitcoin does because the same small group of people will control it.

You and I both are watching them murder bitcoin in broad daylight. They have the power and are given more everyday, so they will make the rules. Back doors into back rooms where the deals are truly made by people who will soon if not already control what used to be the network belonging to the people of the world. Are you going to continue sitting idly by while they control you? You are being manipulated. When kids read about bitcoin in history books will they read about how it was destroyed by greed, or will they read about how the miners made the right choice and changed the way the world works forever? I know one thing they will read, and that is that there were groups of miners who were not on the payroll of the monopoly. I hope to see your name next to mine along with thousands of others who finally said, enough is enough and took a stand.

If driven by pure greed then calculate your earnings and compare them to what you could have earned at kano.is over the past year.
It isn't that I agree with every choice made by that particular pool, but I know the operator has bitcoin survival and proliferation as his top priority. I do not believe he is driven by corporate investors, and I know he is smart, and has good morals.
You will be surprised at the earnings you are missing. There are other good pools as well. There are certainly other pools who do not subscribe to a quick buck above anything else mentality.

If you are driven by your conscience and involved for a variety of reasons you already know the right choice to make, you just need to execute it and show the world where your heart and mind were during the bitcoin revolution.

Either way, wake up and wipe the sleep from your eyes, it is time for you to make a move.

Because without empty blocks, times when there are no transactions (like in the beginning of Bitcoin) requires empty blocks. Otherwise the network could never grow and it would never have worked. The code that allows them must stay in in case of situations that may arise due to people not spending for some reason. It allows mining to continue at such times.

I have been up and down and in and out of the bitcoin codebase and have pondered many, many design characteristics of bitcoin, some seem absolutely unreasonable on first thought, especially given how easy they would be to change with a few lines of code. However, for each, after much thought and reasoning, I have realized the subtle brilliance of some of these seeming mistakes.

From my experiences, I am confident that the presence of empty blocks is a design feature that was considered and their presence is desirable. That we haven't figured out the logic behind their existence does not mean that they are a bad thing, it just means that we haven't thought hard enough about why they strengthen the protocol.

I haven't thought about this issue, so I can't give a good reason why they are permitted.

As Kano explained, pools can choose whether they mine empty blocks or not.  Evidently it used to be common for some pools to mine either empty or very small blocks.

My old message was asking what pools were still doing that on a regular basis.  I think the answer was none except for the initial work immediately after a block find.

The contents of the 'block to be' are decided by the pool before it sends out the work to the miners.

It's rare if ever that there are no transaction available on the network.

Many pools send out work to their miners that includes no new transactions other that the necessary coinbase transaction required to build a block.
That's what all the "Empty Block" stats are about.

My pool https://kano.is/ doesn't send out work containing empty blocks
(unless there are no transaction available in the pool's bitcoind - which is probably never)

Cool. Is it possible for you to open-source this program? I have a few ideas for it.


Are you saying that some pools can opt out of mining empty blocks? I thought you don't know what's coming until you finish mining the block :-/

I guess you learn something new everday day!

Cool man, thanks.  I built it for my mobile so I could obsess over my pool without having to log in or sit there and try to count them one at a time!

Handy little website TracerX thanks adding to my bookmarks

I've built a little tool to help visualize these blocks at bitblk.com.  F2Pool loves to drop empty BTC blocks, but it slaughters the Litecoin network.  I'm amazed more people aren't aware of this.

I'll be adding a bit of copy that describes the issue for users that may be unaware--if we keep talking about it maybe we can affect change!

Cheers.

Bumping for awareness & educational purposes.....

Perhaps if you read the other stuff I posted about how those blocks found within seconds of the previous you would know why that can happen. I'm not going to repeat myself.

You can run the numbers, let us know what you find.

It doesn't matter if the blocks were found within seconds of each other unless you're looking at pre-2013 blocks.  I doubt there has never been a point in the last 2 years where there were 0 legitimate unconfirmed transactions on the network.

Sorry for waking up this thread.

I am thrilled to see all the data analysis since my last post here. Especially the time evolution looks like a real signal. Well done. Very interesting, thanks a lot to organofcorti, and jonnybravo0311; and everyone who asked the right questions.


Catching up with my reading ... I might have one more such question:


If that ("within seconds of the previous block") is empirically found, let's close the case.

But ...


It should be non-difficult, to aggregate the block generation times of all those 1-tx-blocks ... per mining pool. By giving arithmetic mean, and standard variation of the 1-tx-block-generation-times PER POOL. Together with the number of such 1-tx blocks per pool, it could give an estimate of the statistical significance of the two hypotheses "just a mining software effect" versus "deliberate attempt at freeriding".

You won't see it, either.  A miner doesn't control whether or not the block is empty, the pool does.  One could argue that as a solo miner, I could configure my bitcoind to do something silly like "do not include any transactions that have a fee lower than 100BTC".  In that case, if I ever happened to find a solo block, then it would very likely be empty.

If they have a poorly tuned bitcoind, poorly written custom software, etc. shouldn't they address those problems?  They don't.  Instead they remain lazy.  Bitmain has proven time and again they can't write software worth a damn, and they just don't do anything about it.  Even with kano including the Bitmain drivers in mainline cgminer, Bitmain still uses its own crap fork.  There are pools and pool software out there proven to work faster and be better for the health of the ecosystem.  If these players are so worried about their profit, don't you think they'd do everything they can to maximize it?  SPV mining and empty blocks is not the answer, yet these pools and their operators fall back on it just the same.

I haven't seen any evidence of miners intentionally mining empty blocks. To me, they just seem to be a byproduct of their mining operations which probably aren't all that optimized so mining empty blocks still allows them to be competitive. Of course, if they are mining empty blocks intentionally, then they are also losing some Bitcoin from fees (not enough to have a large impact) and hurting the network.

Some pools have better conditions than others. As kano stated
Those pools with those conditions and other mindsets as ck and kano have (seems to want to help the network, not just profit) choose not to mine empty blocks because at the very least, there is no incentive. They can make more by including more transactions because of fees. And since they have conditions where the overhead doesn't matter, why not mine full blocks and fully verify blocks?

Also, for Chinese miners and pools, that overhead does matter. They might have a powerful server, probably not a well tuned bitcoind or they have poorly written custom software, and they most likely have a shitty internet connection due to the Great Firewall. This makes them find every possible way to make a profit, which includes having to SPV mine and mine empty blocks.

I mean that the average of two blocks, one found a few seconds after the previous and the other twenty minutes after the last block, is still around 10 minutes. The affect of those blocks on the difficulty retarget is negligible.

Consider this, you have a powerful server, a drastically well tuned bitcoind, a very good protected internet connection ... and that overhead suddenly seems really not worth caring about ...
Your test is also considering something else that doesn't affect me

Right. I forgot about the difficulty retarget. However, those blocks found with extreme time differences (1 sec or 1 hour) essentially cancel each other out in regards to the retarget.