{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub1dtr22xd42nv07un2xq0rmtkqkjylgsmexau0anxxafa9xmmn2ncshu7wrs","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1dtr22xd42nv07un2xq0rmtkqkjylgsmexau0anxxafa9xmmn2ncshu7wrs","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2012-05-24\n📝 Original message:On Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:33:12 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:\n\u003e There appears to be some non-trivial mining power devoted to mining\n\u003e empty blocks.  Even with satoshi's key observation -- hash a fixed\n\u003e 80-byte header, not the entire block -- some miners still find it\n\u003e easier to mine empty blocks, rather than watch the network for new\n\u003e transactions.\n\u003e \n\u003e Therefore I was wondering what people thought about a client\n\u003e implementation change:\n\u003e \n\u003e      - Do not store or relay empty blocks, if time since last block \u003c X\n\u003e        (where X = 60 minutes, perhaps)\n\u003e \n\u003e or even stronger,\n\u003e \n\u003e      - Ensure latest block includes at least X percent of mempool\n\u003e unconfirmed TXs\n\nThese are problematic for legitimate miners:\n1) The freedom to reject transactions based on fees or spam filters, is \nseverely restricted. As mentioned in other replies, this is an important point \nof Bitcoin's design.\n1b) This punishes miners with superior transaction spam filtering. As with all \nspam filtering, it is often an \"arms race\" and therefore the filter rules must \nbe kept private by the miners, and therefore cannot be disclosed for the \nvalidating clients to take into consideration.\n2) For a few seconds after a new block is received, the new transaction merkle \nroot(s) are not finished calculating. During this time, most miners are \nworking on \"blank\" blocks with the new previousblockhash but no transactions. \nIf those blocks are ignored, miners are forced to shutdown mining during this \ntime.\n3) As you mentioned, illegitimate miners can easily workaround these \nrestrictions (even the second one, by flooding the network with their own \ntransactions). This puts the legitimate miners at a disadvantage in their own \nsearch for valid blocks, unless they also come up with counter-measures \nthemselves.\n\nThe argument that these are not rule changes is flawed:\n1) As of right now, 99% of the network runs a single client. Anything this \nclient rejects does de facto become a rule change.\n2) Even if there were a diverse ecosystem of clients in place, discouragement \nrules that potentially affect legitimate miners significantly mess with the \nodds of finding a block.\n3) If legitimate miners do not adopt counter-rules to bypass these new \nrestrictions, the illegitimate miners are left with an even larger percentage \nof blocks found.\n\nTo summarize, I believe such a change as proposed would be very harmful to \nBitcoin.\n\nLuke"}