Why are some bitcoin blocks empty? Orange Surf from the mempool.space team joins me to explain his recent research report on this topic. We discuss:
Why do empty blocks happen?
Comparing empty block rates across mining pools
Firmware and config differences
Timestamps:
(00:00) - Intro
(00:44) - Orange Surf’s research report on empty blocks
(02:02) - Block interval data sets
(06:25) - What is an empty block?
(08:09) - What causes an empty block to occur?
(11:35) - Nuances of a working of a miner; switching from empty to full block templates
(14:05) - Differences in the empty block performance
(19:01) - Antpool’s internal miner firmware
(21:30) - Sponsors
(25:00) - Effective management of block templates by mining pools
(34:54) - Ocean's empty blocks
(36:08) - Mining decentralisation and proxy pools
(41:07) - Sponsors
(42:14) - Mining templates & pool payouts
(44:57) - Upcoming mempool features
(49:06) - Outro
Links:
Sponsors:
Stephan Livera links:
