I commented on this on DedBird 21 days ago, telling Antpool to get their shit together.
At that point, they had 5 of 8 empty blocks in a 21 day period.
Now they've got 14 of 18 empty blocks in the most recent 21 days.
Discussion
Why would this be incentivized to mine an empty block if this wasn’t purely a coincidence?
I'm having trouble gaming this out.
I tagged Antpool on DedBird, asking "what? You guys don't like fees?"
The BcashSV empty block miner had a clear incentive: the fees didn't amount to anything worth the effort of including them. Winning the block reward made more sense at the exclusion of fees.
It could be just a natural technical goof. Part of the mining header scheme (article). Or there may be some political statement Antpool is trying to make. I'm not sure what the real answer is.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/why-do-some-bitcoin-mining-pools-mine-empty-blocks-1468337739