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:
- Empty Block Report: https://research.mempool.space/empty-block-report/
- Pool Reserve: https://orange.surf/pool-reserves/
- Enterprise: mempool.space/enterprise
- Community Sponsors: mempool.space/sponsor
Sponsors:
- Swan.com (code LIVERA)
- CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
- Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
- Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
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