This was very helpful, thank you.
To summarize, I believe the reason miners will not propose a block with minimal transactions because of the following reasons:
- No benefit is gained by using a smaller block
- It takes more bookkeeping effort to customize the block rather than mining the larger block you have from receiving all P2P transactions
- Some transactions also come with transaction fees that the ‘winning’ node receives; mining only a couple transactions misses out on this
- Risk for reducing the value of the currency as if transactions are not processing quickly enough, it affects the perceived value of the crypto currency
Topic: Finding the nonce (Read 787 times)
Been doing some educational research on Bitcoin mining and have a question about finding the nonce.
If my goal as a miner is to find 'winning' nonce such that when I concatenate the nonce, the previous hash, and the list of transactions that comprise that block such that the hash of this falls in the target space, what factors affect my list of transactions.
As a miner, you are free to select the transactions that you will put in a block. If you want to be antisocial, you can mine blocks that only contain your coinbase transaction. But see below for an additional incentive.If my goal as a miner is to find 'winning' nonce such that when I concatenate the nonce, the previous hash, and the list of transactions that comprise that block such that the hash of this falls in the target space, what factors affect my list of transactions.
What ensures that I do not just use a list of 5 transactions and work off that?
Nothing - you could do that. However, the bookkeeping work to see whether the transactions were already mined by other miners, and selecting new unmined transactions for your block is about as expensive as the work needed to make a full block...Obviously my block is potentially different than someone else's block, but how does that happen?
The coinbase transaction that you put into your block to get the block reward has a unique address which makes the hash unique even if everything else is equal.And is it possible for me to purposely keep the amount of transactions very low, or is there even an incentive for me doing that?
Transaction fees and some ethics are what keeps miner from mining empty blocks. In addition, a blockchain that does not process transactions quickly enough will have reduced value, and this directly affects the perceived value of the crypto currency.Onkel Paul
Been doing some educational research on Bitcoin mining and have a question about finding the nonce.
If my goal as a miner is to find 'winning' nonce such that when I concatenate the nonce, the previous hash, and the list of transactions that comprise that block such that the hash of this falls in the target space, what factors affect my list of transactions. What ensures that I do not just use a list of 5 transactions and work off that? Obviously my block is potentially different than someone else's block, but how does that happen? And is it possible for me to purposely keep the amount of transactions very low, or is there even an incentive for me doing that?
Thanks in advance for the help!
If my goal as a miner is to find 'winning' nonce such that when I concatenate the nonce, the previous hash, and the list of transactions that comprise that block such that the hash of this falls in the target space, what factors affect my list of transactions. What ensures that I do not just use a list of 5 transactions and work off that? Obviously my block is potentially different than someone else's block, but how does that happen? And is it possible for me to purposely keep the amount of transactions very low, or is there even an incentive for me doing that?
Thanks in advance for the help!
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