Here we go again! ANTPOOL mined empy block - page 2.

Wind_FURY

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Quote from: alani123 on November 29, 2023, 02:11:39 AM

Block number 818960 was mined completely empty by Antpool recently.
At a time of very high transaction fees, we're having this issue again. A large pool like Antpool just sabotaging the protocol...
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001cda8cd28d2a202898fa0b66a1d0a144f81fc1f8fb594

That used to make sense when the block rewards were higher before the previous halvings, and perhaps during those times the competition between miners wasn't that hard. But currently why would a miner give away the opportunity to gain additional incentives "to sabotage" the network that incentivizes it? If they keep "sabotaging" the network, and if Bitcoin mining is a business of small margins, then they will just kill themselves.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I believe philipma1957 could explain why if it's truly an attempt to savotage the network.

stompix

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Quote from: Zaguru12 on November 29, 2023, 03:03:31 AM

By sabotaging if you mean destroying the protocol i would say they aren’t doing anything since it doesn’t affect the network security. Yes I would say it is a waste of block since there is lots of transactions in mempool and since Antpool was the last to mine the previous block they could have just added new transactions since they are aware of which is valid and not but probably choose an attempt to mine an empty just to get the block reward first and not waste power as transaction verification could take time.

There is no power usage involved in this, they have already used that hashing power to find the block, it's just that they choose to let the empty block propagate first before verifying what transactions to include in it rather than waiting for that and risk other pool to mine one and broadcast it first. So is no power saved and no power waster, the gear was already in search f a new block the millisecond that one (the empty one) was found.

Quote from: DdmrDdmr on November 29, 2023, 04:39:41 AM

I wonder if anyone knows (not guesses) exactly why those values were so high over the first few years, something that seems to have been corrected over time.

Let's start with the fact that there are only 16 blocks with a tx in the first 1000, and only 19 tx in total? Cheesy

Since you a barely had a dozen users and 144 blocks a day it would have been pretty normal to a ton of empty blocks.

Quote from: alani123 on November 29, 2023, 02:11:39 AM

Block number 818960 was mined completely empty by Antpool recently.
At a time of very high transaction fees, we're having this issue again. A large pool like Antpool just sabotaging the protocol...

So was 818882 and 818904 yesterday, nobody is sabotaging anything, it's juts someone taking advantage of pure luck, and before you saying something about Antpool being the one that does this the most, they do mine 30% of all the blocks, so pretty normal it's them who encounter this more often.

vjudeu

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Quote

I wonder if anyone knows (not guesses) exactly why those values were so high over the first few years, something that seems to have been corrected over time.

It is simple: in the past, nobody knew about Bitcoin, and there was no transactions in mempools. It was normal to have an hour, when nobody sent any transaction. And guess what: in that case, miners had no choice, but to mine an empty block.

Also note that the first blocks just introduced new coins to the system. So, because of coinbase maturity, you had no chance to spend your coinbase transaction, for the first 120 blocks (that was later reduced into 100 blocks).

Another important reason was, that after each block, all mempools were almost always fully cleared. There was simply not enough transactions to fill the whole 1 MB. If you had for example 100kB in your mempool, then one block, and it was empty. And then, if nobody sent anything in the next 10 minutes, then your next block had to be empty.

I would say more: if Bitcoin would have a lot of fully-filled blocks in 2009 or so, that could mean a spam attack, because the usage was simply not so high at those times.

DdmrDdmr

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There are lies, damned lies and statistics. MTwain

In general terms, we can get a glimpse of all the empty blocks being mined here:
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/blocks?q=time(2009-01-01%2000:00:00..2023-12-31%2023:59:59),transaction_count(1)#f=time,guessed_miner,transaction_count,size,id

Unfortunately, it’s not trivial to export in order to be able to visualize aggregates by guessed miner.

There is an interesting thread that breaks down the data by multiple criteria (year, month, miner), though it hasn’t been updated for over two years now: BTC empty blocks (2009 - 5 May 2020): miners, size, daily, monthly, yearly stats.

On aggregate, deriving the data right now from Dune.com, the number of yearly empty blocks mined adds up to:

Code:

Year    nEmptyBlocks (1 Tx)
2023	122 (insofar)
2022	144
2021	221
2020	240
2019	314
2018	438
2017	528
2016	977
2015	1701
2014	547
2013	420
2012	1526
2011	3585
2010	46489
2009	32311

I wonder if anyone knows (not guesses) exactly why those values were so high over the first few years, something that seems to have been corrected over time.

Jon_Hodl

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While it's frustrating for us as users, the real loser is AntPool and the miners who use their pool.

I think this was just the result of AntPool mining 2 blocks in quick succession so I don't think it really had a big impact on fees.

Tick Tock. Next Block.

Zaguru12

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Quote from: alani123 on November 29, 2023, 02:11:39 AM

Block number 818960 was mined completely empty by Antpool recently.
At a time of very high transaction fees, we're having this issue again. A large pool like Antpool just sabotaging the protocol...
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001cda8cd28d2a202898fa0b66a1d0a144f81fc1f8fb594

By sabotaging if you mean destroying the protocol i would say they aren’t doing anything since it doesn’t affect the network security. Yes I would say it is a waste of block since there is lots of transactions in mempool and since Antpool was the last to mine the previous block they could have just added new transactions since they are aware of which is valid and not but probably choose an attempt to mine an empty just to get the block reward first and not waste power as transaction verification could take time.

Quote from: Mia Chloe on November 29, 2023, 02:32:49 AM

I believe that is a starting block broadcasted by the network that is why the fees is zero it help start the blocks and makes it kinda easier for miners to receive the next block.

This is how an empty block is mined

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on May 09, 2023, 03:16:46 AM

When a node receives a block from somewhere else, it has to spend a little bit of time verifying that block, checking every transaction in the block is correct and accurate, and then updating its set of unconfirmed outputs to remove all the outputs which have just been spent and add all the new outputs which have just been created. This doesn't take long - usually in the order of a few seconds depending on your hardware - but it isn't instant.

While this is happening, a miner cannot create a new block filled with transactions to work on, because it doesn't know which transactions it can and cannot include until it verifies which transactions have just been mined in the block it just received. So for these few seconds, the miner's options are either to have their mining equipment sit idle and do nothing, or attempt to mine an empty block until they have fully verified the last block. Since having their equipment sit idle would be a waste of money, most miners attempt to mine an empty block for a few seconds until they create a normal block filled with transactions and then switched to trying to mine that instead. Very occasionally a miner will be successful in these few seconds and will mine an empty block.

franky1

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Quote from: Mia Chloe on November 29, 2023, 02:32:49 AM

I believe that is a starting block broadcasted by the network that is why the fees is zero it help start the blocks and makes it kinda easier for miners to receive the next block.

when a pools solves a block it has to remove the SPENT UTXO from its mempool, add new UTXO's to mempool from confirmed block.. and then collate fresh unspent/uncomfirmed transactions to add to a block template.. this takes a few seconds.

so during the time from solving a block to having a "filled block" they can't just have their stratum workers asics laying idle waiting for a "filled" block template header. so the pool sends them an empty template header to work on in the meantime.

its pure luck one of them asics finds a solution in seconds to a 'empty block' .

Mia Chloe

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I believe that is a starting block broadcasted by the network that is why the fees is zero it help start the blocks and makes it kinda easier for miners to receive the next block.

However miner are being sent block templates without transactions so the can progress to mining the next block as quick as possible.this can also be a form of luck like franky1 mentioned as miners may find a new block in the template within the short time interval of the broadcasting of the next larger block.

franky1

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it was pure luck
antpool first mined block 818959.. and seconds later was lucky to solve the next block template before having chance to add a list of transactions

you will find many pools will empty block when they purely by chance solve a block within seconds of their last solve.

alani123

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Block number 818960 was mined completely empty by Antpool recently.
At a time of very high transaction fees, we're having this issue again. A large pool like Antpool just sabotaging the protocol...
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001cda8cd28d2a202898fa0b66a1d0a144f81fc1f8fb594

Topic: Here we go again! ANTPOOL mined empy block - page 2. (Read 374 times)