February 14, 2023 –Bitcoin is known for being robust, secure, and predictable. On average, the blockchain generates a new block every ten minutes, and the lucky miner is rewarded with 6.25 Bitcoin, valued at around $130,000 based on current market prices. Having said that, once in a while, Bitcoin’s blockchain will surprise its participants and spectators.
Nodes throughout the network confirmed that a completely empty block was located at block height 776,339. The block was included in the blockchain with zero transactions, resulting in some bafflement among the cryptocurrency community.
While a completely empty block may seem unusual at first, it’s a relatively normal occurrence. The last empty block was discovered just over two weeks ago. Miners want to mine blocks as fast as possible, and occasionally, they mine a block before receiving any transactions to include in that block. Once this happens, the block stays empty.
Bitcoin’s mempool, where most go to analyze the blockchain, offers up this explanation:
“When a new block is found, mining pools send miners a block template with no transactions so they can start searching for the next block as soon as possible. They send a block template full of transactions right afterward, but a full block template is a bigger data transfer and takes slightly longer to reach miners.”
In simple terms, the miners who made the discovery “got lucky” to mine a template. In this situation, the block located at height 776,389 was added only seconds after block 776,488. Block 776,388 actually earned an additional 0.086 BTC, which was added to the standard block reward of 6.25 BTC.
“In this intervening time, which is usually no more than 1–2 seconds, miners sometimes get lucky and find a new block using the empty block template.”
Despite the fact that an empty block contains no transactions, the miner is still rewarded with newly minted Bitcoin. Therefore, block 776,389 was given 6.25 BTC with no transaction fees. The miner of this empty block was Binance Pool, which contributes approximately 12% to the network’s total hash rate.
Contrary to popular belief, empty blocks do not present a problem for the Bitcoin network. When mining empty blocks, miners do still generate the coin transaction, which keeps the asset on its path to 21 million coins issued.
The percentage of completely empty blocks found on the network is small, usually 1%–2%. The percentage is even more surprising these days, considering the rise in popularity of “ordinals” on Bitcoin, or the power to permanently etch images, data, and stamps in the blockchain.
The rise in the popularity of ordinals has triggered some debate and even some concern among the crypto community after the first instances of sexually graphic images were recently reported. The mempool has grown progressively busier, and block space is being battled for as some JPEG enthusiasts rush to add their artwork to the blockchain.