Why Do Some Bitcoin Mining Pools Mine Empty Blocks?
Blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain have a maximum size of 1 MB. Proof of work difficulty is calibrated so 1 block is created every 10 minutes. It is generally accepted a miner would want to maximise the number of transactions it includes in a block as it collects the transaction fees. Logically, with the growing popularity of Bitcoin, the average block....
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Empty blocks have turned into a controversial topic in the Bitcoin community over the past few months. This renewed attention on the topic has been sparked by the number of nearly-empty blocks mined by Antpool recently. An empty block is one that only contains a coinbase transaction. This may seem counterproductive, but there are incentives in place that make mining empty blocks a practical endeavor from the perspective of a miner. Why Do Miners Mine Empty Blocks? According to Bitcoin Core contributor Matt Corallo, there are three main reasons as to why empty blocks have been mined in the....
It is generally accepted that latency in block propagation is one of the bottlenecks for Bitcoin scaling. This is why many of Bitcoin’s most active developers and researchers have presented a series of solutions to compress blocks and speed up propagationover the past years. It is not as well known that these solutions may not suffice on their own. Due to a practice called “spy mining” or “pool-watcher mining,” Bitcoin mining has increasingly come to rely on the data and network infrastructure provided by mining pools. As a result, many mining pools are not necessarily incentivized to....
Currently, everyone’s been focused on the price of bitcoin and turbulent global markets. However, in the bitcoin mining and development space, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. Smaller Mining Pools and Bitcoin Unlimited. As Bitcoin.com previously reported the bitcoin network’s hashrate distribution among mining pools has been changing. Lately,....
Guldencoin, a national cryptocurrency in the Netherlands, has developed a "readjustment" algorithm called DELTA that adjusts the difficulty in mining block chains. The algorithm helps miners generate blocks at regular intervals. The DELTA readjustment algorithm maximizes the amount of hash power miners have to generate blocks. In doing this, the readjustment algorithm addresses the mining difficulty caused by profit-switching pools. These are centralized mining pools that switch between coins based on the level of coin profitability. Why mining pools switch coins. The pool normally waits....
Many people don't know about the different types of mining pools out there. Multi-pools allow for mining multiple currencies based on profitability, some only focus on promising new coins, and some only focus on one particular coin as their whole purpose. Not only are there different mining pool types to choose from, but the payout methods are different, with PPLNS, PROP, and PPS being the most popular. This mining guide will clue you in on what pools are available to you, and what payout methods they use. A Guide to Different Cryptocurrency Mining Pools. Single Coin Mining Pools. Single....