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From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti•com>
To: Bitcoin Development <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 12:33:12 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CA+8xBpdBe4yR6xkCODL6JQ41Gyx9eWcGGGvcQVt7DCmaEnAhbg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)

There appears to be some non-trivial mining power devoted to mining
empty blocks.  Even with satoshi's key observation -- hash a fixed
80-byte header, not the entire block -- some miners still find it
easier to mine empty blocks, rather than watch the network for new
transactions.

Therefore I was wondering what people thought about a client
implementation change:

     - Do not store or relay empty blocks, if time since last block < X
       (where X = 60 minutes, perhaps)

or even stronger,

     - Ensure latest block includes at least X percent of mempool
unconfirmed TXs

The former is easier to implement, though there is the danger that
no-TX miners simply include a statically generated transaction or two.

The latter might be considered problematic, as it might refuse to
relay quickly found blocks.

Comments?  It wouldn't be a problem if these no-TX blocks were not
already getting frequent (1 in 20).

-- 
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti•com



             reply	other threads:[~2012-05-24 16:33 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 31+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-05-24 16:33 Jeff Garzik [this message]
2012-05-24 17:05 ` Arthur Britto
2012-05-24 17:13 ` Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
2012-05-24 17:23   ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-24 17:27 ` Robert McKay
2012-05-24 18:16   ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-24 20:31 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-24 21:00   ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-25  0:45 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-25  0:51   ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-25  0:57     ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-25  1:17       ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-25  7:47         ` Christian Decker
2012-05-25 13:44           ` Alan Reiner
2012-05-25 14:00             ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-25  1:00     ` Gregory Maxwell
2012-05-26  5:03 ` Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
2012-05-26 11:52   ` Stefan Thomas
2012-05-28 14:54     ` Peter Vessenes
     [not found]       ` <1338222334.48856.YahooMailNeo@web121001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
2012-05-28 16:25         ` [Bitcoin-development] Fw: " Amir Taaki
2012-05-29  8:52       ` [Bitcoin-development] " Michael Grønager
2012-05-29 14:47         ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-29 15:05           ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-29 15:18             ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-29 15:28               ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-29 15:34                 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-29 15:36                   ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-29 15:39                     ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-29 15:45                       ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-29 16:30     ` Rebroad (sourceforge)
2012-05-29 15:33 ` Gregory Maxwell

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