Empty blocks

[TracerX]

Bumping for awareness & educational purposes.....

I've built a little tool to help visualize these blocks at bitblk.com.  F2Pool loves to drop empty BTC blocks, but it slaughters the Litecoin network.  I'm amazed more people aren't aware of this.

I'll be adding a bit of copy that describes the issue for users that may be unaware--if we keep talking about it maybe we can affect change!

Cheers.

Handy little website TracerX thanks adding to my bookmarks

Cool man, thanks.  I built it for my mobile so I could obsess over my pool without having to log in or sit there and try to count them one at a time!

[Sir_lagsalot]

Cool. Is it possible for you to open-source this program? I have a few ideas for it.

Can you tell what pool(s) are currently mining 0 transaction blocks consistently?
Thanks,
Sam

Are you saying that some pools can opt out of mining empty blocks? I thought you don't know what's coming until you finish mining the block :-/

I guess you learn something new everday day!

[kano]

Cool. Is it possible for you to open-source this program? I have a few ideas for it.

Can you tell what pool(s) are currently mining 0 transaction blocks consistently?
Thanks,
Sam

Are you saying that some pools can opt out of mining empty blocks? I thought you don't know what's coming until you finish mining the block :-/

I guess you learn something new everday day!

The contents of the 'block to be' are decided by the pool before it sends out the work to the miners.

It's rare if ever that there are no transaction available on the network.

Many pools send out work to their miners that includes no new transactions other that the necessary coinbase transaction required to build a block.
That's what all the "Empty Block" stats are about.

My pool https://kano.is/ doesn't send out work containing empty blocks
(unless there are no transaction available in the pool's bitcoind - which is probably never)

[os2sam]

Cool. Is it possible for you to open-source this program? I have a few ideas for it.

Can you tell what pool(s) are currently mining 0 transaction blocks consistently?
Thanks,
Sam

Are you saying that some pools can opt out of mining empty blocks? I thought you don't know what's coming until you finish mining the block :-/

I guess you learn something new everday day!

As Kano explained, pools can choose whether they mine empty blocks or not.  Evidently it used to be common for some pools to mine either empty or very small blocks.

My old message was asking what pools were still doing that on a regular basis.  I think the answer was none except for the initial work immediately after a block find.

[multicurrency]

I have been up and down and in and out of the bitcoin codebase and have pondered many, many design characteristics of bitcoin, some seem absolutely unreasonable on first thought, especially given how easy they would be to change with a few lines of code. However, for each, after much thought and reasoning, I have realized the subtle brilliance of some of these seeming mistakes.

From my experiences, I am confident that the presence of empty blocks is a design feature that was considered and their presence is desirable. That we haven't figured out the logic behind their existence does not mean that they are a bad thing, it just means that we haven't thought hard enough about why they strengthen the protocol.

I haven't thought about this issue, so I can't give a good reason why they are permitted.

[achow101]

I have been up and down and in and out of the bitcoin codebase and have pondered many, many design characteristics of bitcoin, some seem absolutely unreasonable on first thought, especially given how easy they would be to change with a few lines of code. However, for each, after much thought and reasoning, I have realized the subtle brilliance of some of these seeming mistakes.

From my experiences, I am confident that the presence of empty blocks is a design feature that was considered and their presence is desirable. That we haven't figured out the logic behind their existence does not mean that they are a bad thing, it just means that we haven't thought hard enough about why they strengthen the protocol.

I haven't thought about this issue, so I can't give a good reason why they are permitted.

Because without empty blocks, times when there are no transactions (like in the beginning of Bitcoin) requires empty blocks. Otherwise the network could never grow and it would never have worked. The code that allows them must stay in in case of situations that may arise due to people not spending for some reason. It allows mining to continue at such times.

[sloopy]

This is where your morals as a miner and ultimately a human being who has an impact on the Bitcoin Ecosystem and by proxy the world and you must make a decision to support pools who mine empty blocks when there are plenty of transactions waiting to be handled.

These pools who choose to spv mine and mine 0 transaction blocks do not deserve anyone's loyalty because of the choices they make. The people who make the decisions for these pools do not care about the future of bitcoin outside of what it makes for them tomorrow. They do not care if in 10, 20, or 50 years bitcoin is worthless, they do not use their profits to help the miners, they do not give their time to help the ecosystem, they only care about them, and supporting such is complete greed and a lack of a moral compass.

Now when I say morals I am not talking about something as complicated as a religious discussion. I do not mean a philosophical expression which one could contemplate for weeks, I am talking about the difference between black and white, good and bad,  dirty or clean, being a thief, or doing the best someone can to treat others as they want to be treated.

This is about as simple as any conversation or debate could be and anyone denying that mining an empty block when there are valid transactions waiting to be processed does not have reality in their sights.

F2pool will tell you they are just a bunch of geeks trying to get by but what they will not tell you is that they collude with a couple of other of the largest pools which exist to provide each other with block confirmations in China before the rest of the world has an opportunity.

What you should ask yourself is have you shown yourself you cannot make just as much if not more coin by mining at a pool which does not mine zero transaction blocks. People could make just as much money and help the network grow while securing it for the future by mining at pools who do not spv mine and mine zero transaction blocks.

There are many things allowed by code. Just because the code doesn't stop you from doing something doesn't mean it is something you should do. We all know the people contributing to bitcoin core have immense amounts of things to address and they should do so with the interest of the network security and longevity at heart.

We have already had forks because of the spv mining and we see transactions skipped by the largest pools every single day. Does anyone think this will translate to helping the network grow? If so, please explain how not processing transactions will help bitcoin? The more people who sit waiting for a transaction to process then the more people we have thinking that bitcoin isn't all good and well. The more miners who grow frustrated seeing those same pools grow larger begin to question bitcoin as well. Eventually things like this can be a breaking point and this is where morals can come into play.

Imagine you have provided all of the miners on the bitcoin network a fantastic sum of money to do nothing but continue mining wherever they choose, as long as it helps the network grow and provides the security to do so. Removing the economic reason for mining and place all decision making on the individual miner to choose the pool they mine at not based on how much coin they make, but how much they think that particular pool will help bitcoin grow and trust the pool owners / operators to make the best decisions for the bitcoin network.
What do you think the hashrate charts would look like then? Anything similar to today's distribution?

Again, consider these things yourself, consider the choices you have made and continue to make regarding a variety of things in life. Isn't it always better in the long run to do the right thing?
If it wasn't right no one would care. If I hadn't seen these things first-hand, if I hadn't been exposed to the pure greed which drives one of the biggest pools I wouldn't care. If I hadn't been shown the empty blocks and began to do my own research, began to ask my own questions and also have a natural curiosity to question the status quo I literally would never post about it because it wouldn't matter.

Please don't take my word for it. Look at these things on your own and if you care that bitcoin puts its best foot forward to the world then start by showing them that bitcoin is based on people who make decisions to better the bitcoin community for the long haul. Allowing F2pool and Antpool to continue mining with these tactics shows the corporate world this is a simple extension of their banking system for the taking, and that is exactly what is happening. As more control flows to these central locations even if the power was never used (imagine a company having power over bitcoin and not abusing it), even if those companies didn't choose to perform further acts which harm the community while filling their pockets they have the opportunity to do so.

Maybe a different viewpoint will help some people, and if you are driven by pure greed then at least be a person who stands up for what they believe in and sincerely open your eyes to long term growth. Where do we go at this pace? More new miners join those pools because they are the largest and those pools continue to get larger. You may get daily payouts (albeit much smaller payouts than other pools), but that is short sighted, you can still make just as much if not much more mining at a pool which is not setup to spit out zero transaction blocks.

Someone mining for the act of purely making more coin can even see that as those pools grow larger and gather more power they position themselves to control the network. Consider BIP101. It doesn't matter if you supported it or not, but the fact that F2pool and Antpool could push the network to BIP101 if they choose to do so is not at all what any true supporter of bitcoin would ever choose, much less someone mining for pure profit. Because they originally were quoted as saying they would support a revision of BIP101 but then did not do so, and regardless of the exact semantics why on earth would anyone want to see such an immense amount of control over the complete bitcoin universe in the hands of a small group of people who have shown consistently they only care about themselves.

What choices do we always see greedy corporations make once they become a monopoly? They make choices that make them more money. ...And who supplies the additional income for them above what they are making now? The very customers who provided them with the ability to become that monopoly. We do not live in a fair world and I think most miners know this. Regardless of the fact that some of us (myself included) may enjoy the occasional immature joke, or even act immature when calling out someone on the forum, we know right from wrong and when removing ourselves mentally from the situation enough to think clearly can see what is happening.
Those of us old enough to remember other monopolies, or the people who see the ones standing today as the local cable company and AT&T work together to make sure you pay out the wazoo every month for less than half or worse of the internet speeds and caps of the rest of the world, well, I know that if I'd understood this twenty five years ago I would not have continued to give those companies my money. The majority of miners are doing the same thing today. Do we need governments telling us where to mine? Do we need the governments who have proven repeatedly not to have our best interests at heart telling us where to point our hash. Because if / when the government gets involved the only monopoly is theirs. They may let F2pool keep the name, but they certainly will no longer have control. But we are a long way from anything like that. We have many years of the monopoly of the few before we get to that extreme, and we have the opportunity to make a choice.

You may quietly continue pointing your hash at a pool where you think you make more money for whatever reason regardless of how it impacts the network and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Actually, you are part of the majority by continuing to do so. You may quietly kick back and only care about today, and you may even have yourself convinced that your hashrate doesn't matter. Hell they already have so many PH of the network it doesn't matter what you choose, you may be heading out the door to go out on Friday night and spend some of your coin and you don't have time for what you see is a trivial thing that has no bearing on you.
... Just like casting a vote, it matters more than you will understand until you no longer have a choice.

Take a few minutes, say 20 minutes and read some of the opinions of the people on this forum who are posting about these scenarios. JohnyBravo doesn't have a dog in this fight in the manner of pool versus pool, but look at his opinions. I've followed JB's posts on a couple of different forums and firmly believe he has a good handle on the bitcoin landscape from the home miner perspective. He has nothing to lose or gain by making the statements he does regarding zero transaction mining. Why would he display his research and opinion, or spend his time delving into things such as this if it weren't fact.
I would not care what any pool did if it didn't harm the future of this gorgeous creation called bitcoin. I know I am pretty much small potatoes as miners go but through everything I've learned about bitcoin is to some people it is their personal money making machine and nothing more. They care about today and into tomorrow. They care about keeping the cash train rolling, but they do not have the goal of changing the financial world forever and leveling the playing field, they do not care about the people paying hundreds of millions of dollars in remittance fees, the people who have to spend 5, 7, or even 10 to 20 % of their minimum wage paycheck just to send money back home so their family can eat while they try to save up enough money to move their family to their new country.

There will only be a few people who make real money with bitcoin and it will not be the miners. I hate to break it to the people who think they will be millionaires from mining coin but unfortunately those of us who weren't around a few years ago are catching the tail end of what could be a beautiful thing.  This is because the more control those pools gain, the less people will be convinced this is a secure system. See, it doesn't matter if the actual miners are decentralized if all of the hashrate is going to 2 or 3 pools who work in collusion with each other. They have the ability to do all sorts of evil deeds with it, and you haven't began to understand the mindsets involved if you do not think they will use that power to gain even more power. It is as obvious as the sky being blue and if miners do not wake up and begin making choices to turn this car around none of the other small stuff is hardly worth consideration. It doesn't matter what BIPs are implemented, it doesn't matter if the core programmers make any changes, and it doesn't matter what the price of bitcoin does because the same small group of people will control it.

You and I both are watching them murder bitcoin in broad daylight. They have the power and are given more everyday, so they will make the rules. Back doors into back rooms where the deals are truly made by people who will soon if not already control what used to be the network belonging to the people of the world. Are you going to continue sitting idly by while they control you? You are being manipulated. When kids read about bitcoin in history books will they read about how it was destroyed by greed, or will they read about how the miners made the right choice and changed the way the world works forever? I know one thing they will read, and that is that there were groups of miners who were not on the payroll of the monopoly. I hope to see your name next to mine along with thousands of others who finally said, enough is enough and took a stand.

If driven by pure greed then calculate your earnings and compare them to what you could have earned at kano.is over the past year.
It isn't that I agree with every choice made by that particular pool, but I know the operator has bitcoin survival and proliferation as his top priority. I do not believe he is driven by corporate investors, and I know he is smart, and has good morals.
You will be surprised at the earnings you are missing. There are other good pools as well. There are certainly other pools who do not subscribe to a quick buck above anything else mentality.

If you are driven by your conscience and involved for a variety of reasons you already know the right choice to make, you just need to execute it and show the world where your heart and mind were during the bitcoin revolution.

Either way, wake up and wipe the sleep from your eyes, it is time for you to make a move.

[p3yot33at3r]

Bravo again sloopy 

[sloopy]

Bravo again sloopy 

Thank you, you are kind.

I know most people will say it is too long, too much to read, and many or most will skip on by, but if maybe a few people will read and contemplate some of these things we can have an impact. Even one miner is better than none, and I know there are many great people mining at those pools who just haven't been exposed to an opportunity where the facts have been presented as they are in this thread.

I think one of the best things is that people could make fantastic amounts of money using their hashpower if they used it wisely. Making those pools compete more for your hashpower is what will drive bitcoin into the future.

Every single miner should consider the power they have, and the possibilities are huge by simply changing the pool you mine at for a short amount of time, IE a couple of months just to see,  as it is a vote to say no, you want bitcoin to be the best it can be and it will be controlled by no one and everyone but never the small few.

I do appreciate the kind words, and please help pass the word so more people consider their choice in where they mine. That single choice has the power to make this one of the most fantastic times to ever be alive. Lets make sure we do not give up our right to mine where we want and see bitcoin evolve into the infrastructure of the most beautiful financial system this universe will ever see.

[727miner]

Well said Sloopy! I agree with your points and that's why I choose to mine at CK's solo pool as well as Kano's pool. I feel that CK & Kano are truly looking out for and helping the little guys have a chance against these Mega pools. I hope others consider their choices and do the same. Peace 

[opentoe]

Greed will be the demise of Bitcoin. It is interesting though.

[thebonenz]

Thanks for this thread it opened my eyes a lot! and now I feel dirty...dirty but informed about my poor previous decisions haha

[enthus]

They relay and verify previous transaction, they are not useless I do not think.

[opentoe]

Bravo again sloopy 

Thank you, you are kind.

I know most people will say it is too long, too much to read, and many or most will skip on by, but if maybe a few people will read and contemplate some of these things we can have an impact. Even one miner is better than none, and I know there are many great people mining at those pools who just haven't been exposed to an opportunity where the facts have been presented as they are in this thread.

I think one of the best things is that people could make fantastic amounts of money using their hashpower if they used it wisely. Making those pools compete more for your hashpower is what will drive bitcoin into the future.

Every single miner should consider the power they have, and the possibilities are huge by simply changing the pool you mine at for a short amount of time, IE a couple of months just to see,  as it is a vote to say no, you want bitcoin to be the best it can be and it will be controlled by no one and everyone but never the small few.

I do appreciate the kind words, and please help pass the word so more people consider their choice in where they mine. That single choice has the power to make this one of the most fantastic times to ever be alive. Lets make sure we do not give up our right to mine where we want and see bitcoin evolve into the infrastructure of the most beautiful financial system this universe will ever see.

I started to mine bitcoin to gain a little profit. Pre KNC days. I think I've tried every pool that was available.  The most profitable pool I used was BTCGuild. The uptime was probably %99 or better. When the Guild disappeared I went on Ghash (ya know, that pool/company that was going to take over the Bitcoin network) but eventually dropped on Slush's for a while. Wasn't having a good time there so if I can remember I think I hopped on Bitminter. Then Eligius somewhere in there. I'm not talking about just a few days on each pool, I'm talking at least a month or more on each pool. I ended up on Antpool. Always got constant payouts and according to the small hashing power I pointed there it was correct. Then read "bad" things about Antpool and it wasn't good to mine on these Chinese pools because once again they are getting too large and going to take over the world. Well, if you already live in the US you are aware that our economy sucks and basically import everything from China. Our companies and jobs also went there too. Ok, so I pointed 10TH to CKPool and ran for about a 2 months. With all the re-starts or firmware issues, who knows, I could never get the same payouts on that pool as I did with Antpool. Even when I switched back to Antpool after my try with CKPool, my payouts were more. It is nice telling people to mine on certain pools because technical issues that probably %90 of miners have no idea of.  I can't write as elaborate as user sloppy, but what is the little guy like me who's not making any real money switch to a pool that gets less payouts then a hated pool? Everyone is mining to make a profit and they stay with the pool at which makes them the most profit. Hence, greed comes into play and all I want to do is get as much bitcoin in return to pay my electric bill, and maybe some "dust" after that.

[Monnt]

Do pools value empty blocks, or do they try to not mine them? What really is the point of empty blocks, I thought bitcoin has transactions every single block?

[jonnybravo0311]

It depends on the pool.  Some pools use code trickery to try and get work out to their miners as fast as possible.  The technique is to publish an empty block as quickly as possible, then to update it with transactions afterwards.  Well, it can happen that a miner solves the empty block.  Many pools take this approach, and the bigger the pool, the more often you'll see empty blocks.  Other pools fill up the block with as many transactions as possible an then publish the work out to miners.  These pools will never submit empty blocks because their miners are never given an empty block on which to work.

There is nothing in the bitcoin protocol that forces a block to contain transactions other than the coinbase one.  You could feasibly setup a pool that would only ever mine empty blocks.  The downside to mining empty blocks is that plenty of transactions out there will now have to wait until somebody else includes them in their blocks.  With the largest pools out there mining empty blocks, it's quite possible that you'd see a whole string of empty blocks in a row on the blockchain all the while new transactions are waiting to be confirmed.

[thirdchance57]

Here is the question I am pondering and I did not see a comment answering this, but would empty blocks allow future access into the BTC system in order to scam the chain somehow?

[achow101]

Here is the question I am pondering and I did not see a comment answering this, but would empty blocks allow future access into the BTC system in order to scam the chain somehow?

How? What do you mean to scam the chain?

The answer to whatever scenario you think of is probably not. There is nothing special about empty blocks. They don't have any special properties, they are just blocks that only have the coinbase transaction. In general they are basically a nuisance, they don't really add anything to the blockchain but they aren't detrimental and harming it.

[nepaluz]

This whole empty blocks cum spv mining is simply "too much ado about nothing"!

The way I see it is there will be a time when mining empty blocks will neither be in the interests of the pool nor the miner, assuming they are separate entities and otherwise, therefore the empty blocks will die a natural death. Before that threshhold is crossed, it can not be reasonably assumed that empty block mining is or can be detrimental to the bitcoin ecosystem, infact, it would be foolish to even think so and downright silly to assert so.

I should add that the only time I've noticed transaction confirmation delays is when the network is under attack and not when empty blocks have peaked. It would also be interesting to establish what percentage of network-wide transaction confirmations is attributed to the pools being pillored for empty block / spv mining against those that do not regularly mine empty blocks.

The only pseudo-substantive argument that I have seen put forward against empty block mining boils down to a veiled effort to lure miners to certain pools, no more.

[jonnybravo0311]

Nepaluz, unfortunately you're probably correct about there being a tipping point where pools will realize that mining empty blocks is not beneficial for them.  Right now, the generation of 25BTC far outweighs any transaction fees included in a block.  Honestly, I don't understand why AntPool would ever mine an empty block, since they keep the transaction fees for themselves.  It would behoove them to stuff as many large-fee transactions as they could into their blocks.  F2Pool charges 4%, so until the transaction fees are greater than 1BTC per block, or 0.5BTC per block after the halving, they've got absolutely no incentive to put transactions in their blocks.

Where I will disagree with you, however, is in your assertion that SPV mining is not detrimental.  SPV mining has previously caused forks in the blockchain.  The very process itself is unstable, using only header information instead of verifying the actual blocks.