- Dec 27, 2015
- 1,085
- 2,741
I've been monitoring how full the blocks have been getting and one thing I have noticed is that empty blocks have been skewing the numbers. Even one per hour in a run of nearly-full blocks can drop the fullness by 16%. In the last few days, there was a run where 3 in 6 were empty, dropping a near 100% fullness to less than 50%
Now, at first empty blocks may look little less than annoyance on the blockchain and it adds to the block height so more confirmations, yada-yada. However, it also contributes to difficulty calculations. If 1 in 10 blocks is empty, the difficulty will be that much higher that it will effectively rob us of 10% of hashrate or 10% of our tps. Clearly, it is anti-scaling.
Now, mining empty blocks is by the rules so I'm not calling foul on miners who are just acting in their own self interests. Adding a hard limit against empty blocks would be tricky and contentious. But it occurs to me that just as BU allows us to set preferences for the max block size whilst still allowing us to follow along the longest chain for the consensus, it might also work for the minimum block size.
Though again, it occurs to me, once again that miners could still game this by inserting their own transactions. So maybe I should just not post this. But maybe there's something someone else can build on so I'm going to put it out there anyway.
Now, at first empty blocks may look little less than annoyance on the blockchain and it adds to the block height so more confirmations, yada-yada. However, it also contributes to difficulty calculations. If 1 in 10 blocks is empty, the difficulty will be that much higher that it will effectively rob us of 10% of hashrate or 10% of our tps. Clearly, it is anti-scaling.
Now, mining empty blocks is by the rules so I'm not calling foul on miners who are just acting in their own self interests. Adding a hard limit against empty blocks would be tricky and contentious. But it occurs to me that just as BU allows us to set preferences for the max block size whilst still allowing us to follow along the longest chain for the consensus, it might also work for the minimum block size.
Though again, it occurs to me, once again that miners could still game this by inserting their own transactions. So maybe I should just not post this. But maybe there's something someone else can build on so I'm going to put it out there anyway.
