Something Odd Is Happening at Bitcoin’s Largest Mining Pool Read more: http://w

[Hydrogen]

While SPV mining is one reason for not full blocks (as franky1 nicely explained), the second reason is sometimes miner adds transactions with certain fee/byte only. In the past I have seen blocks around 500-900KB, with no transaction included under for example 25 Satoshi/byte.

So thinking there going to be always full blocks filled up to maximum capacity is wrong, its the miners who decide what transactions to add and some define spam as for example under 25 Satoshi/byte transaction not worth adding even if there is available space.

Because during some days/hours people send more transactions (peak times), it make sense to increase block sizes above 1MB, so the Bitcoin user experience is good even at peak times.

Very interesting.

I wonder when btc miner peak activity is, and how long it lasts.

Is it possible for partially filled blocks during periods of inactivity to accumulate over time?

The article claims many blocks are 99, 369 and 860 KB.

Recently, AntPool has been mining a number of blocks with sizes of around 99 KB, 369 KB and 860 KB.

That seems like something that could cause congestion during periods of inactivity which acccumulate over the long term.

[deisik]

More disturbing when one take into account the fact that majority of mining rigs are situated in China and monopoly of all things in the hand of the Chinese doesn't bide well for the rest of the world. Something need be done to address this ugly part of Bitcoin before it metamorphosed into a point of departure.

And what exactly have they done to harm bitcoin?

Maybe, made everything to make transaction fees higher?

I didn't check it myself (I agree with that), but I've heard that there is quite a load of scammy transactions hitting the blockchain nowadays. I don't know and thus I don't claim that it is the miners themselves who are behind that but they certainly profit by that. Also, read at least the topic title. Why would they want to do that if not to create artificial shortage of transaction confirmation capacities, which makes people set higher fees if they want their transactions confirmed fast or just in a timely manner. It is not that any individual miner which is evil, it is mining monopoly which is, i.e. centralization of mining in a couple (well, dozen) of hands