Bitcoin Forum

Empty blocks have reduced significantly since the start of the year. Anyone know a simple reason why?

Coz I annoyed F2Pool and they did something about their empty blocks.

Then a thank you is in order.  So, thanks.

OK, I asked for that.

Anyone know of a more complex reason -- for example did F2Pool did anything to reduce the need for empty blocks?

Yeah I've no idea exactly what they did.
Either they stopped SPV, or they are adding random useless txns to their SPV mining.
I've not looked at what's in their short blocks (i.e. blocks found just after another)

But the point that I think made FUPool take notice was the fact that solo.ckpool and kano.is where the top 2 block sizes of all pools and a BIG gap below us.
On kano.is I only set it to 988888 and still I was 2nd top of the list well above the others.

Here's the list (6 months):
http://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/blocksize/6m?t=l
Scroll down to "Blocks size by mining pool" and click twice on "Average size"

Bitminter, AntPool and slush are way down the list ... and eligius near the bottom - eligius is to blame for starting the empty block "idea".

But if you do a shorter time span (30 days):
http://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/blocksize/30d?t=l
Solo is still at the top, but I'm only 4th since others seem to have made larger blocks recently also.
eligius still sux down at the bottom ... with slush :P

They're still making empties though so they're still SPV mining -- just not as regularly, I guess.

New bitcoind is much faster than the old one at generating block templates so they switch away from their empty SPV block work sooner than they used to.

Thanks, -ck.

Which bitcoind? Was it available after October last year (when we first started to see much smaller interblock durations than previously)?

0.12 branch, so whenever dev for that had made significant progress if they had switched to it. They say they made other changes (after kano's continual prodding) but one can only surmise what they may have been; probably the first step to switching to a full block template as soon as it was available from a fully validating client (bitcoind).

I would hope/assume that after the halving the occurrence of SPV mining will decrease because fees will be a bigger percentage of the mining award.  Perhaps all this unconfirmed chaos resolves itself in a month!

May be interesting, coz like at my pool for the past 25 blocks, txn fees have averaged 2.1% ... so after halving that would be 4.2% ...

Though people still mine PPS with high fees thus are guaranteed to only get 97.5% PPS or worse already.
I don't think most miners on Bitmain and FUPool actually really care about losing some % all the time ... or they are just ignorant of their stupidity.

It will get better after ½ ing and if we are still doing this for 4 more years it will improve more.