Punishing empty blocks?



Summary:

Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin developer, raised the issue of empty blocks being mined despite Satoshi's key observation that miners can hash only the fixed 80-byte header. Some miners still find it easier to mine empty blocks than to monitor the network for new transactions. Garzik suggested two client implementation changes: not storing or relaying empty blocks if time since the last block is greater than 60 minutes, and ensuring the latest block includes at least X percent of mempool unconfirmed TXs. However, there may be some issues with both approaches. The former may lead to no-TX miners including statically generated transactions, while the latter may refuse to relay quickly found blocks. Arthur also chimed in, recommending a stronger change to prevent a mystery miner from masking his block by putting in a few transactions to himself.


Updated on: 2023-06-06T04:42:58.260053+00:00