After bitcoin was empty in blocks 954,352, the market began to discuss whether this was an occasional situation or whether miners had made choices about their strategy. Empty blocks mean that blocks are successfully dug out, but they do not contain transactions and are therefore not common in the Bitcoin network.
Why are there empty?
Empty blocks are usually related to the trade-offs made by miners between the time they receive the trade, assemble the blocks and take out the blocks. If miners wish to submit blocks as soon as possible, they may dig a non-tradable block and continue to process the deal in the next round.
Such situations may also be related to delays in network dissemination, to processes within the mine or to the technical configuration of miners at the time. Since the bitcoin network has a fixed rhythm, any anomaly is quickly noticed by chain observers.
Market focus
For traders, empty blocks per se do not alter the basic mechanisms of bitcoin, but they will give renewed attention to the efficiency of miners, the revenue from handling fees and the utilization of block space. An increase in the frequency of empty blocks may also be seen as a sign of a change in the behaviour of miners.
At present, the incident is more a chain-level anomaly than a major network-level failure. Whether it is a “frequent event” or a “mineer strategy” has also been the focus of discussion.