0-transactions block mined?

[WinTame2012]

Block #236041
Summary
Number Of Transactions                    1
Output Total                                      25 BTC
Estimated Transaction Volume          0 BTC
Transaction Fees                                0 BTC
Height   236041 (Main Chain)
Timestamp   2013-05-13 17:46:10
Received Time   2013-05-13 17:36:35
Relayed By   BitMinter
Difficulty   11,187,257.46136079
Bits   436305897
Size   0.236328125 KB
Version   2
Nonce   2739345384
Block Reward   25 BTC
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How can it be?..

[Knecke]

the one who founds the block didnt include transactions in it. its legit.

[WinTame2012]

the one who founds the block didnt include transactions in it. its legit.

A bit new to me. Thanks, now I see. Then just a couple of questions:
1. why one can't mine only such blocks (as it easier to do)?
2. isn't it a profanation of the whole idea (in some way)?

[Knecke]

1. its a bit easier to not include txs
2. they miss the tx fees, if they think its more profitable to not include txs its ok, there are others...

[WinTame2012]

1. its a bit easier to not include txs
2. they miss the tx fees, if they think its more profitable to not include txs its ok, there are others...

Can't see a reason why eventually a huge number of misbehaving miners didn't end up mining just empty blocks to save some time/energy :-/ Looks to me like a flaw in the system, similar to parasitic data in the blockchain.

[Terk]

Can't see a reason why eventually a huge number of misbehaving miners didn't end up mining just empty blocks to save some time/energy :-/

I think that transaction fees are on average 0.40 BTC per block recently. So to make mining empty blocks more profitable, it would need to be at least 1.60% cheaper than when including transactions. Though I have no idea how to estimate actual “savings” from this misbehaving, I believe this will be less and less profitable, and eventually it will loose money to mine empty blocks. Fees per block were 1/3 of today's just a half year ago.

[DannyHamilton]

1. its a bit easier to not include txs

Negligibly so.  It takes a small fraction of a second for miners to build the merkle root when there are transactions in the block.

[WinTame2012]

1. its a bit easier to not include txs

Negligibly so.  It takes a small fraction of a second for miners to build the merkle root when there are transactions in the block.

25 BTC is issued per block to encourage miners to support the network verifying transactions. But what the sense of awarding miner in this case?

[DannyHamilton]

1. its a bit easier to not include txs

Negligibly so.  It takes a small fraction of a second for miners to build the merkle root when there are transactions in the block.

25 BTC is issued per block to encourage miners to support the network verifying transactions. But what the sense of awarding miner in this case?

Every new block added to the blockchain makes it more difficult to modify all the previous transactions that have ever been added to the blockchain in the past.

The main purpose of the block subsidy is to provide a reasonably fair way to issue the nearly 21 million new bitcoins.  It is convenient that this subsidy also acts as an incentive to mine when there aren't very many transactions yet.  Approximately every 4 years the block subsidy will be cut in half.  Eventually, the value of the transaction fees will be much larger than the block reward itself, so the incentive to mine empty blocks will get smaller and eventually vanish.

[WinTame2012]

DannyHamilton, thank you for explanation. I was just wondering if this is fair enough in this days. Eventually it will, I believe.