Smallest Bitcoin block

[pussyhunter6969]

just for fact this is the smallest bitcoin block i saw, unconfirmed transaction was only 200+ lol

https://btc.com/block/563857

[dothebeats]

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000189ad9b20ed103ac14ca5c08ecfb0f5a0f538e4678f4535c46

The same happened on this one too, wherein the block only contained a single transaction for the block reward. Idk if this is possible to do on a cumulative manner, though one thing I know is that it wouldn't be beneficial for the miner (in terms of profits) and the network (in terms of included transactions in a block) in the long run.

[leonair]

OP posted the Bitcoin Block #225943 was in year 2013 and I'm thinking that it's fine as the price of Bitcoin before was less than $50 but dothebeats found the most recent block with 1 transaction and I'm getting curious why is this even possible up to this day.

[pussyhunter6969]

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000189ad9b20ed103ac14ca5c08ecfb0f5a0f538e4678f4535c46

The same happened on this one too, wherein the block only contained a single transaction for the block reward. Idk if this is possible to do on a cumulative manner, though one thing I know is that it wouldn't be beneficial for the miner (in terms of profits) and the network (in terms of included transactions in a block) in the long run.

Mining empty blocks was a fear about asic boost for a while wasn't it?

yes but its a good think empty blocks doesn't harm anyone

[LimLims]

OP posted the Bitcoin Block #225943 was in year 2013 and I'm thinking that it's fine as the price of Bitcoin before was less than $50 but dothebeats found the most recent block with 1 transaction and I'm getting curious why is this even possible up to this day.

Yeah absolutely agree with you.
The block is of year 2013 and at that time Bitcoin was not so popular among the common mass. Bitcoin was also less than 100 bucks too at that point of time, so it is normal that the block will be smaller compare to the current bitcoin blocks.
By the way nice Findings OP lol 

[franky1]

this is about what is termed 'empty block'

though many myths theories and suggestions for why.. the main one is this

when a pool gts told of another competitive pool came up with a block solution.
pools are suppose to give up their current progress, check the block and then start their own fresh block attempts ontop and include thousands of new unconfirmed transactions in that new attempt.

howevr the checking recent block solution and collating a fresh batch of unconfirmd transactions to put into nxt block attempt takes time.

so some pools. instead of wasting hashpower time during that checking/collating/patching a new full block together. they simply grab the hash of rcent block solution and start hashing an empty block.

they then check the recent block solution, subtract out the now confirmed transactions from their mempool and then make a collated block of unconfirmed transactions to hash.

again coz it takes time. there is a window between:
block solution announced
start hashing empty block/while validating collating
start hashing full block

you will see MOST 'empty' blocks occur only when there has been high luck of that (2nd)block being solved just seconds or a couple minutes after previous. because after a couple minutes the asics would then be hashing a block header that would be of a full block collated list of transactions. so its just luck to see an empty block because on those occassions the pool just happen to get a solution within seconds/couple minutes so didnt have time to collate a fresh transaction list in that 'empty' window time

..
i say most because some pools do just not bother collating fresh transaction lists.
you can usually spot the difference between luck or on purpose empty blocks by the time windows.
if empty block is solved under 2 minutes after previous block higher chance it was just a luck thing.
if empty block is solved at a more regular time EG 3mins + higher chance it was an on purpose empty block

[fronti]

at the beginning of this Bitcoin Experiment there are a lot of blocks smaller than the one from the OP

Block 2
https://btc.com/000000006a625f06636b8bb6ac7b960a8d03705d1ace08b1a19da3fdcc99ddbd

has only 215 byte
OPs example 288 Bytes

but sure, in nower times mining an empty block is not usal.
If I remember (but dit not find it) there was sometimes a block even without the coinbase.
Or was it with missing conbase transaction, not sure anymore.

[squatter]

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000189ad9b20ed103ac14ca5c08ecfb0f5a0f538e4678f4535c46

The same happened on this one too, wherein the block only contained a single transaction for the block reward. Idk if this is possible to do on a cumulative manner, though one thing I know is that it wouldn't be beneficial for the miner (in terms of profits) and the network (in terms of included transactions in a block) in the long run.

Mining empty blocks was a fear about asic boost for a while wasn't it?

I don't think the concern was about AsicBoost, but rather validationless "spy mining." Spy miners connect to competing pools, so when a competing pool finds a block and forwards the block header hash, they can start mining on top of it before validating. This prevents wasted idle hashing time.

The reason it produces empty blocks is because of Bitcoin mining's Poisson distribution -- sometimes a new block can be mined mere seconds after the previous one. This doesn't allow enough time for full validation. The spy miner can't risk including any transactions from the mempool, because they may have already been included in the previous block. Their only choice to secure the coinbase reward is to mine an empty block.

Supposedly more than half of all miners were spy mining in 2016. I'm not sure about now.

[Ains_sama]

yes, that's true and I think it's the smallest blockchain I have ever seen, and I think it's very good and it's very special.

[pooya87]

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000189ad9b20ed103ac14ca5c08ecfb0f5a0f538e4678f4535c46

The same happened on this one too, wherein the block only contained a single transaction for the block reward. Idk if this is possible to do on a cumulative manner, though one thing I know is that it wouldn't be beneficial for the miner (in terms of profits) and the network (in terms of included transactions in a block) in the long run.

by the way that is the smallest block that has ever been found. it is the smallest because of the following:
- it doesn't have the OP_Return that most other coinbase transactions have.
- it only includes a very small (10 byte) scriptsig unlike others that usually put a bigger thing there. like the tx in OP which has a 75 byte scriptsig.

[pussyhunter6969]

FYI, genesis block (1st block) and any blocks which only contain coinbase transaction are few of smallest blocks

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000189ad9b20ed103ac14ca5c08ecfb0f5a0f538e4678f4535c46

The same happened on this one too, wherein the block only contained a single transaction for the block reward. Idk if this is possible to do on a cumulative manner, though one thing I know is that it wouldn't be beneficial for the miner (in terms of profits) and the network (in terms of included transactions in a block) in the long run.

It's not weird if time interval time between blocks is less than a minute, especially because it's mined few years ago when bitcoin is less popular and a transaction need few seconds to propagate/received by all nodes.

smallest block i mean block without any confirmed transaction rather then coinbase, so any block without a transaction are counted as same