Mara pool draws Trump ))

[amaclin1]

https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000010c05038d08c742d28a7a248e9d0f94ebe5102f366c8e

[NotATether]

The image, in case anybody can't see it:



One must wonder how the expected block consisted of only a few giant consolidation transactions.

Edit: apparently they created all those transactions themselves, they're all OP_RETURNs and the first four spells out

MARA DIGITAL HOLDINGS Welcomes

Donald J. Trump as the 47th

president of The United States of

America.

There's the US constitution in more OP_RETURNs below that too.

Seems like these transactions were mined privately by MARA.

But you can only see the image from mempool.space. I think that's a feature not a bug.

[hopenotlate]

The image, in case anybody can't see it:

/image removed for better thread reading\

One must wonder how the expected block consisted of only a few giant consolidation transactions.

Edit: apparently they created all those transactions themselves, they're all OP_RETURNs and the first four spells out

MARA DIGITAL HOLDINGS Welcomes

Donald J. Trump as the 47th

president of The United States of

America.

There's the US constitution in more OP_RETURNs below that too.

Seems like these transactions were mined privately by MARA.

But you can only see the image from mempool.space. I think that's a feature not a bug.

lol awesome.

Where did you get that quote from? Is it somewhere visible or inscribed into the transaction or what? How can an average Joe like me see it and, generally speaking, see if some message is inscribed into a bitcoin transaction?

[NotATether]

Where did you get that quote from? Is it somewhere visible or inscribed into the transaction or what? How can an average Joe like me see it and, generally speaking, see if some message is inscribed into a bitcoin transaction?

Yeah it's inscribed in the first couple of OP_RETURN transactions in the block. If you go to the link OP posted then Mempool.space shows a bunch of transactions that look like

UNKNOWN

OP_RETURN "four or five words here"

It's just below the Coinbase transaction, you can't miss it.

But you can see it on any other block explorer that displays OP_RETURN stuff, like Blockstream.

It's split across several transactions because OP_RETURN has a very small data limit.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

Visually it looks cool but technically, it looks terrible. It matches with history of this mining pool as MARA is a shady mining pool that tries to censor Bitcoin transactions and this issue was reported in the following article.

miningpool-observer: Observing Bitcoin Mining Pools. Transparency for Mining Pool Transaction Selection.

[NotATether]

Visually it looks cool but technically, it looks terrible. It matches with history of this mining pool as MARA is a shady mining pool that tries to censor Bitcoin transactions and this issue was reported in the following article.

miningpool-observer: Observing Bitcoin Mining Pools. Transparency for Mining Pool Transaction Selection.

MARA seems to be a very "patriotic" mining pool (make of that what you will) who put "made in USA" and the American flag in the coinbase of every block they mine so judging by that, they will always implement US recommendations for bitcoin mining. By choice though.

At least we have a lot of other mining pools who's business model is modeled on zero-sum games rather than political directives.

[hopenotlate]

Where did you get that quote from? Is it somewhere visible or inscribed into the transaction or what? How can an average Joe like me see it and, generally speaking, see if some message is inscribed into a bitcoin transaction?

Yeah it's inscribed in the first couple of OP_RETURN transactions in the block. If you go to the link OP posted then Mempool.space shows a bunch of transactions that look like

UNKNOWN

OP_RETURN "four or five words here"

It's just below the Coinbase transaction, you can't miss it.

But you can see it on any other block explorer that displays OP_RETURN stuff, like Blockstream.

It's split across several transactions because OP_RETURN has a very small data limit.

Ouch feel dumb now, I just needed to scroll down the mamepool page I was looking at and everything was right there. Furthermore , if I get it right there is the whole American Constitution written in that block.

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

[Ultimate Will]

I had no idea this is possible. We are looking at something only a mining pool can do, since they include all their extra transactions (and have to keep doing it until they "win" a real block), is that correct?

The image, in case anybody can't see it:

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/01/17/WHwH2.png

One must wonder how the expected block consisted of only a few giant consolidation transactions.

Edit: apparently they created all those transactions themselves, they're all OP_RETURNs and the first four spells out

MARA DIGITAL HOLDINGS Welcomes

Donald J. Trump as the 47th

president of The United States of

America.

There's the US constitution in more OP_RETURNs below that too.

Seems like these transactions were mined privately by MARA.

But you can only see the image from mempool.space. I think that's a feature not a bug.

[Free Market Capitalist]

I had no idea this is possible. We are looking at something only a mining pool can do, since they include all their extra transactions (and have to keep doing it until they "win" a real block), is that correct?

I would like to have more technical knowledge to understand it better but as far as I know when a miner finds a block he can decide to include the transactions he wants, that's why sometimes you see transactions below 1 sats/vByte or much lower than the average fees at that moment, because they are from the same mining pool consolidating and things like that. But the fact that they have been able to draw that image in the block I don't understand it very well either, and it has been expensive for them, right?

[amaclin1]

and it has been expensive for them, right?

only expected fees they did not earn from users txs.
0.01 — 0.03 btc
So, this was cost ~$200


Update: expected fees for that block were 0.015 btc. You can see this on mempool.space

[adultcrypto]

Visually it looks cool but technically, it looks terrible. It matches with history of this mining pool as MARA is a shady mining pool that tries to censor Bitcoin transactions and this issue was reported in the following article.

miningpool-observer: Observing Bitcoin Mining Pools. Transparency for Mining Pool Transaction Selection.

I don't know about MARA being a shady mining pool but if they tried to censor bitcoin in the past, don't you think that inscribing the image of Donald Trump into that block might be their way of trying to please the incoming president and also saying that they were toeing the wrong path in the past (that is if they supported censorship) bu have decided to change to conform to the new administration that seems to be pro bitcoin? By the way, it is not still technically clear to me how the achieve this image inscription and I guess there are a lot I don't know yet.

[White_Hat_LP]

The image, in case anybody can't see it:

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/01/17/WHwH2.png

One must wonder how the expected block consisted of only a few giant consolidation transactions.

Edit: apparently they created all those transactions themselves, they're all OP_RETURNs and the first four spells out

MARA DIGITAL HOLDINGS Welcomes

Donald J. Trump as the 47th

president of The United States of

America.

There's the US constitution in more OP_RETURNs below that too.
....But you can only see the image from mempool.space. I think that's a feature not a bug.

Very cool, thanks for posting the image! This should be merited/"liked" by people no matter what they think of Trump, simply because we enjoy using computers. Recently, I saw an old xFiles - from 1993 - and the young boy produced a huge, hand-coded, multi-page, stunning image of his sister who had been abducted by aliens. Can we be certain Mara pool and/or Trump are not controlled by aliens? 

[pooya87]

One of the worst centralized mining pools that has a history of carrying out attacks on one of the main Bitcoin Principles (ie. censorship resistance) by openly censoring transactions is welcoming in one of the most corrupt presidents who is also a convicted felon to a government that puts surveillance, censorship and control above everything else!

Future is starting to look darker for Decentralization...

[NotATether]

I would like to have more technical knowledge to understand it better but as far as I know when a miner finds a block he can decide to include the transactions he wants, that's why sometimes you see transactions below 1 sats/vByte or much lower than the average fees at that moment, because they are from the same mining pool consolidating and things like that.

Yes you are correct.

But the fact that they have been able to draw that image in the block I don't understand it very well either, and it has been expensive for them, right?

Yeah but since they mined the block, they also get all the fees from those transactions i.e. it's as if they didn't spend any money on tx fees to create this image.

[Free Market Capitalist]

... that puts surveillance, censorship and control above everything else!

You say that because you think the outgoing US government was so much better than Trump in this regard?

Future is starting to look darker for Decentralization...

It would have been much, way much darker in this regard with Kamala in power.

[Helena Yu]

Now the question is will MARA sell their coins like NFT? because in the last two years, many people are willing to buy coins which were linked with pizza transactions by Laszlo or the other thing that make people feel the coins are limited.

The image, in case anybody can't see it:

This version looks better.
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000010c05038d08c742d28a7a248e9d0f94ebe5102f366c8e?audit=false&showDetails=false&view=actual#overview
https://cointelegraph.com/news/mara-trump-47-block-anticipation-pro-bitcoin

[Gozie51]

Future is starting to look darker for Decentralization...

Somewhat so, if we are now seeing the face of the yet to be sworn in president of the United States inscribed in one of the mining blocks. This is more like pushing for more control and regulation from the Trump administration.

[pooya87]

... that puts surveillance, censorship and control above everything else!

You say that because you think the outgoing US government was so much better than Trump in this regard?

No. I've been making similar statements about all centralized entities that start creeping into Bitcoin world. Whether it was the government of my own country when they decided to first blame their own incompetency (power shortage) on bitcoin miners only to regulate and restrict mining to tax it. Or the US government (not any particular administration) which categorized internet as a military battlefield decades ago and has been assigning 4-star military generals to it with tens of billions of dollars budget dedicated to mine people's data on it, running the biggest surveillance operation in the world!

Future is starting to look darker for Decentralization...

It would have been much, way much darker in this regard with Kamala in power.

I don't see it that way. I see a trend of increasing surveillance, regulation/restriction, crackdown and shutting down anything decentralized that may help improve privacy like mixers, etc. That trend started a long time ago and is only getting worse every year as Bitcoin grows.

Different administrations in the US may take a different approach but that trend is unchanging. Trump is just more radical than Harris but they both operation within the same regime...

[bSpend]

Future is starting to look darker for Decentralization...

Somewhat so, if we are now seeing the face of the yet to be sworn in president of the United States inscribed in one of the mining blocks. This is more like pushing for more control and regulation from the Trump administration.

I choose to see this from different angle actually, I dont think the reason for mara pool deciding to mine the portrait of Trump into a bitcoin block is to necessarily call for more control and regulation from his (trump) administration.

Trump like we all know is the very first crypto president, and alot of people in the crypto space are honoring him in different ways for that, any body can decide how he or she chooses to honor the first crypto president, and if this is mara pool's way of doing that, I see nothing wrong in this, it's a very creative way actually, and I commend the effort and money spent on this.

For some of us, this actually is showing us that cool stuffs like this can be done on the blockchain aside transaction confirmation and all that.

[pooya87]

Trump like we all know is the very first crypto president,

He is the first convicted felon president who talked about crypto, otherwise Nayib Bukele the president of El Salvador is the first real president to didn't just talk about it, he adopted bitcoin as legal tender in his country about 4 years ago!