Jeff Garzik [ARCHIVE] on Nostr: 📅 Original date posted:2012-05-24 📝 Original message:There appears to be some ...

📅 Original date posted:2012-05-24
📝 Original message:There appears to be some non-trivial mining power devoted to mining
empty blocks. Even with satoshi's key observation -- hash a fixed
80-byte header, not the entire block -- some miners still find it
easier to mine empty blocks, rather than watch the network for new
transactions.

Therefore I was wondering what people thought about a client
implementation change:

- Do not store or relay empty blocks, if time since last block < X
(where X = 60 minutes, perhaps)

or even stronger,

- Ensure latest block includes at least X percent of mempool
unconfirmed TXs

The former is easier to implement, though there is the danger that
no-TX miners simply include a statically generated transaction or two.

The latter might be considered problematic, as it might refuse to
relay quickly found blocks.

Comments? It wouldn't be a problem if these no-TX blocks were not
already getting frequent (1 in 20).

--
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik at exmulti.com