Block Less Than A Kilobyte In Size? - block just contains coinbase - 476754

[jackg]

https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000133b1f5f05d1be6582b3f10e5fdb940d8896b85525a32ec

Does this mean the mempool has officially decreased to a very small amount that these can be sent or is this an error either of the network or of blockchain.info?

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[nibor]

These are quite common - look it was mined very soon after a block had just been mined.

Issue is that after a block has been mined the mining pool has to get details of a new block - this involves verifying the last block was OK, removing all the transactions that were in the last block from the memory pool, select new ones, building the merkel tree and then the header to mine with. This takes some time (should be less than a second).
So during that second a lot of pools just create an empty block - this will always be valid - with the last block has as the previous block - some do not even validate the old block - especially as in this case as they mined it, and send that header to the miners to mine.

If they did not do this the miners would be idle for a short period of time every time there was a new block.

Mining an empty block for 12.5 btc is better than doing nothing...

You can see there was plenty in the mempool here:
http://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/memory-pool

[chiller]

And it might mean that the current difficulty is too low or that increase in difficulty will be adjusted (increased) soon™

[amaclin1]

https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000133b1f5f05d1be6582b3f10e5fdb940d8896b85525a32ec

Does this mean the mempool has officially decreased to a very small amount that these can be sent or is this an error either of the network or of blockchain.info?

OMG! Hero member question in "Development & Technical Discussion"!
Move it to "Newbies & help" asap

[jackg]

These are quite common - look it was mined very soon after a block had just been mined.

Issue is that after a block has been mined the mining pool has to get details of a new block - this involves verifying the last block was OK, removing all the transactions that were in the last block from the memory pool, select new ones, building the merkel tree and then the header to mine with. This takes some time (should be less than a second).
So during that second a lot of pools just create an empty block - this will always be valid - with the last block has as the previous block - some do not even validate the old block - especially as in this case as they mined it, and send that header to the miners to mine.

If they did not do this the miners would be idle for a short period of time every time there was a new block.

Mining an empty block for 12.5 btc is better than doing nothing...

You can see there was plenty in the mempool here:
http://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/memory-pool

I assumed these blocks would normally be orphaned. But it is faster just to mine the header and not the entire block, it is not an efficient way to do it - you don't get the TX fee of individual transactions if there aren't any on a block).

And it might mean that the current difficulty is too low or that increase in difficulty will be adjusted (increased) soon™

Luck can also be the case in mining a fast block.

[chiller]

Luck can also be the case in mining a fast block.

Or this. It would be interesting to get some statistic on such fast blocks ( lets say 10 seconds or less). I know there's a lot of luck involved in solving block puzzles. Call me dumb but I still believe that there's some space for low power/hashing power bitcoin solo mining nodes  cheap to hash a block in a lifetime even in this exohash magnitude difficulty times if you are lucky:)

[jackg]

Luck can also be the case in mining a fast block.

Or this. It would be interesting to get some statistic on such fast blocks ( lets say 10 seconds or less). I know there's a lot of luck involved in solving block puzzles. Call me dumb but I still believe that there's some space for low power/hashing power bitcoin solo mining nodes  cheap to hash a block in a lifetime even in this exohash magnitude difficulty times if you are lucky:)

I think this was the purpose of the Antminer R1. If you push 1 chip at a solo pool you may eventually get something (and it was a router anyway so, if you didn't, you had something to extend your internet connection).

While it's really unlikely to get a block this way, if you don't pay for electricity it's worth a try on an old computer.