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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