Who cares if a block is empty?
One more block above your transaction = your transaction 1 confirmation deeper in the block chain.
Yes even empty blocks make everyone's transactions stronger.
Plus no block is "empty" it always have 1 transactions.
Lastly there is no good way to enforce including transactions in a block.
If you
a) ask largest pools to ignore these blocks you are asking them to 51% the network. come on people think a little. should we be encouraging major pools to 51% our own network?
b) change the protocol to require transactions other than the coinbase in a block then it creates all kinda of new problems
First people who currently mine empty blocks will simply include a single transaction from one account they own to another. What's next a rule of at least 5 transactions? Still easily spoofed. The second issue is you create a situation when no transactions happen that a "good miner" will need to either spoof the network or choose to stop mining. Do we want to encourage block chain spam really? Lastly if miners did stop mining when no transactions occured you would totally fuck up the difficulty adjustment algorithms.
Bitcoin is about freedom. The protocol rules so you can mine a block with no transactions yet people decide "it isn't fair" and want to change it. Some people just can't escape the nanny state mentality ("there should be a rule against that"). Sad.
So TL/DR:
There are no empty blocks, blocks with a single transactions don't hurt you, trying to change it is next to impossible, and ANY BLOCK above your transaction makes it stronger.
Topic: Wonder who this solominer is? 88.6.216.9 - page 35. (Read 60498 times)
The transactions are currently not worth beeing included and that needs to change.
When the block value drops from 50 to 25 BTC the transaction are a bigger part of the mining, so that's already going to change. 
I implore the three biggest pool operators to stop accepting empty blocks as valid. After that, everyone will follow.
Let's say that happens. Then what? Which scenario do you think will play out:
A. Empty-block miners see their blocks invalidated, so they pack up and go home.
B. Empty-block miners see their blocks invalidated, so they create a little dust so they don't have empty blocks anymore.
Bottom line: Empty-block miners are passing up on fees. That's their loss, and everyone else's gain.
C. Empty-block miners make a union and hijack the network by doing 51% of the hashrate and ignoring blocks with transactions.
You guys realize that with a few thousand dollars a day (10-20k), any government can disrupt bitcoin sufficiently? For the millions of dollars each government agency wastes yearly, surely they could do this if they wanted to.
I implore the three biggest pool operators to stop accepting empty blocks as valid. After that, everyone will follow.
Let's say that happens. Then what? Which scenario do you think will play out:
A. Empty-block miners see their blocks invalidated, so they pack up and go home.
B. Empty-block miners see their blocks invalidated, so they create a little dust so they don't have empty blocks anymore.
Bottom line: Empty-block miners are passing up on fees. That's their loss, and everyone else's gain.
By the way, Luke-Jr used this method of not including any TXes to suppress springcoin's altchain.
A little different, my understanding is Luke-Jr was actually ignoring other nodes blocks and just kept building upon his own?
From my point of view the reason why ppl can do this without losing anything are the small transaction fees. But in the long term no processed transactions will cause higher transaction fees and that will cause more miners to include transactions.
I agree that they are harming the network because they could include transactions with little effort. But higher tx fees are anyways necessary for the future and this seems like a small step to it for me.
The transactions are currently not worth beeing included and that needs to change.
I agree that they are harming the network because they could include transactions with little effort. But higher tx fees are anyways necessary for the future and this seems like a small step to it for me.
The transactions are currently not worth beeing included and that needs to change.
Without including transactions, they'll never be accused of trying to double spend, at least.
By the way, Luke-Jr used this method of not including any TXes to suppress springcoin's altchain.
A little different, my understanding is Luke-Jr was actually ignoring other nodes blocks and just kept building upon his own?
Either way, the suppression attack is what I meant by "strangulation attack" - It slows down the networks ability to process transactions because a portion of blocks ignore all TXes, which also raises the difficulty. This means that transactions are now slowed down by *AT LEAST* their portion of the network due to legit miners now running at a higher difficulty. It could slow down the network even more if enough nodes were doing this type of "attack" and created a backlog of transactions where legit nodes could not wrap them up into blocks as fast as they're coming in.
I've being trying to label 88.6.216.9 (and their old ip 88.6.208.35) for a while.
I hope they know about/support BIP30 and BIP16.
At least BIP16 can be a way to stop them :) (joke)I hope they know about/support BIP30 and BIP16.
By the way, Luke-Jr used this method of not including any TXes to suppress springcoin's altchain.
Nah, no shallow denial only, I would orphan the second example as well.
I'll revise this post a bit upon reflection (really needs video to illustrate). There's another case I forgot:
Where 80% of all mining pools are ignoring blocks with zero transactions:
64% of the time:
20% of the time
16% of the time (or maybe 8%?)
In the 16% case above, the "no transaction block" could have a higher difficulty hash, the normal pools would see this and still be hashing using the no-transaction block, and not be using the ignoring pool's block of lower difficulty - once one finds another block and publishes, they still win. By building on the blocks of an ignoring pool you might lose your block finding reward too... and it continues further than I can illustrate with text...
Where 80% of all mining pools are ignoring blocks with zero transactions:
64% of the time:
[Normal block] ══╤══>[block by ignoring pool]══>[more blocks]
┖┄>[no-transaction block]┄┄┄┄> orphaned
20% of the time
[Normal block] ══╤══>[no-transaction block]══>[block by normal pool]══>[more blocks]
┖┄┄>[block by ignoring pool]┄┄> orphaned
16% of the time (or maybe 8%?)
[Normal block] ══╤══>[block by ignoring pool]══>[block by ignoring pool]┄┄> orphaned
┖┄>[no-transaction block]══>[block by normal pool]══>[more blocks]
In the 16% case above, the "no transaction block" could have a higher difficulty hash, the normal pools would see this and still be hashing using the no-transaction block, and not be using the ignoring pool's block of lower difficulty - once one finds another block and publishes, they still win. By building on the blocks of an ignoring pool you might lose your block finding reward too... and it continues further than I can illustrate with text...
Even if 80% of the network agrees to ignore them, the "block ignorers" lose 20% of their mining income by making orphan blocks beaten by someone who isn't ignoring.
That can't be right. The 20% non-ignorers wil lose 100% percent of their revenue ()their blocks are determined to be invalid by 80% of the network) and the revenue of the 80% ignores will rise by that portion (so by 25%) because still 50 BTC are awarded every 10 minutes.
And the fact that there are always transactions waiting is exactly my point.
The problem is that pool operators can't reasonably ignore the no-transaction blocks. If they ignored them and continued looking for a block solve based on the previous block before it, some other pool that isn't ignoring them will build on them and grow a longer blockchain.
They can with at least 50.00001% of the hashing power. So I implore the three biggest pool operators to stop accepting empty blocks as valid. After that, everyone will follow.
Blocks without transactions are not "bad", look at the first year of Bitcoin mining. If these guys are ignoring transactions, that's also more transaction fees to be claimed by the rest who do include transactions.
They are if there exist valid transactions waiting to be confirmed.
Because I want everything to work out normally within a time frame which is as short as possible. But sure, if we wait long enough (possibly much longer than humans live) the free market will always reach the optimum given a set of rational actors.
I've being trying to label 88.6.216.9 (and their old ip 88.6.208.35) for a while.
I hope they know about/support BIP30 and BIP16.
I hope they know about/support BIP30 and BIP16.
The problem is that pool operators can't reasonably ignore the no-transaction blocks. If they ignored them and continued looking for a block solve based on the previous block before it, some other pool that isn't ignoring them will build on them and grow a longer blockchain.
They can with at least 50.00001% of the hashing power. So I implore the three biggest pool operators to stop accepting empty blocks as valid. After that, everyone will follow.
Blocks without transactions are not "bad", look at the first year of Bitcoin mining. If these guys are ignoring transactions, that's also more transaction fees to be claimed by the rest who do include transactions.
They are if there exist valid transactions waiting to be confirmed.
Of course I know. But they should be awarded to people actually processing transactions. That is what they (me included cause I mine as well) signed up for. The only practical use of mining is transaction processing. Miners should do that or not get paid imo.
The problem is that pool operators can't reasonably ignore the no-transaction blocks. If they ignored them and continued looking for a block solve based on the previous block before it, some other pool that isn't ignoring them will build on them and grow a longer blockchain. Blocks without transactions are not "bad", look at the first year of Bitcoin mining. If these guys are ignoring transactions, that's also more transaction fees to be claimed by the rest who do include transactions.They may simply not be using the same client and they haven't taken the time nor have any incentive to include this feature.
It would cost them close to nothing in term of computing power to include the transcations.
I outlined possibilities why they might not be including transactions - including transactions requires a constant stream of network data from miner to control server. Not doing so reduces their hosting demands and reduces their exposure to detection if they are making unauthorized use of resources. It would cost them close to nothing in term of computing power to include the transcations.
They may simply not be using the same client and they haven't taken the time nor have any incentive to include this feature.
It would cost them close to nothing in term of computing power to include the transcations.
In the long run they'll eventually figure-out they're hurting themselves on a small scale my making transaction confirm slower.
(Their profit is worth less since slow transaction is no good for the BTC net.)
It would cost them close to nothing in term of computing power to include the transcations.
In the long run they'll eventually figure-out they're hurting themselves on a small scale my making transaction confirm slower.
(Their profit is worth less since slow transaction is no good for the BTC net.)
Of course I know. But they should be awarded to people actually processing transactions. That is what they (me included cause I mine as well) signed up for. The only practical use of mining is transaction processing. Miners should do that or not get paid imo.
No economic benefit? They are being subsidized by the community for 50BTC per block for Christ's sake. IMO no tx no subsidy,
Just reject the empty blocks and if there are no transactions there is also no use for additional blocks.
Just reject the empty blocks and if there are no transactions there is also no use for additional blocks.
They are being subsidized by a magic money-making algorithm, not the community. The mining reward is well thought out as a way of releasing the currency and encouraging blockchain difficulty. The only thing encouraging the inclusion of transactions in the generated block are transaction fees, which recently are approaching zero.
They are subsidized by the community because giving out new coins is diluting existing coins.
Just like I am subsidizing the banking crisis in Europe because the European bank created a trillion euro's out of thin air.
Jump to: