Replying to Avatar The Servile Statist

One possible (unlikely) way: A pool was mining an empty block in the short time it takes ebtween block N being found and block N+1 template being broadcast from the pool to miners.

Using Stratum, mining pools have to create block templates for miners to work. When block # N gets mined, it takes a fraction of a second to create a template for block N+1. To keep their miners hashing while working on the new template, a pool can prep and broadcast an empty block to mine in the meantime. If that empty block is found, bam!

But, I doubt that’s the usual case; it would require very quick discovery of two blocks in a row. The difficulty adjustment makes that unlikely.
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MAHDOOD 2y ago

So they broadcasted the empty block and somehow got lucky enough to win the block reward so fast that they didn't have a chance to fill it with transactions? I guess it is still technically possible even though the probability might be very small.

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The Servile Statist 2y ago

Yeah I offered this idea of what *could* happen to produce an empty block, but not necessarily what happened here.

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BitcoinAscent⚡️ Separation Of Money And State⚡️ 2y ago

Miners don't broadcast blocks (even empty blocks) unless they are mined (hashed with the current difficulty). Even though the block is "empty", there's still the coinbase transaction (the transaction that pays the block reward to the miner) and other information in the block header like the hash of the previous block and the nonce.

So, an empty block on the blockchain is still mined, and isn't really "empty" at all. It's void of transactions other than the coinbase transaction.