In today's world of digital currencies, Bitcoin has always been a highly watched leader, and the craze of its ecosystem has always touched people's hearts. However, recently, an unexpected phenomenon has emerged: the phenomenon of blank block mining has intensified. What kind of mystery is hidden behind this phenomenon? Let's unveil the veil of the blank block mining trend caused by the Bitcoin craze and deeply analyze its roots and reasons.

Bitcoin's uniqueness and development history have made it a globally renowned digital asset, attracting the attention of countless investors. As the price of Bitcoin continues to rise, more and more miners are investing in Bitcoin mining. However, with the increase in mining difficulty and the influence of factors such as halving of rewards, the phenomenon of blank block mining has gradually surfaced.

Blank blocks refer to blocks that do not contain any transaction records during the mining process. Generally speaking, after miners dig a block, they will pack the transaction records into the block and then add it to the blockchain. However, blank blocks do not contain these transaction records, only the block header and some basic information, which leads to doubts and confusion.

There are many reasons for blank block mining, one of the main reasons is network latency and communication problems. In the Bitcoin network, information transmission and synchronization are required between miners to complete the mining and confirmation of blocks. However, due to problems such as network congestion or signal interference, miners sometimes mine blocks of the same height, but due to untimely information transmission, blank blocks are generated.

In addition, the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin network is also an important reason for the mining of blank blocks. Since there are thousands of miners competing for mining in the Bitcoin network, each miner is independently calculating and verifying blocks, which increases the possibility of blank blocks. Therefore, although decentralization is a major advantage of Bitcoin, it also lays hidden dangers for the mining of blank blocks.

In addition, the craze of the Bitcoin ecosystem is also one of the important reasons for the intensification of the phenomenon of blank block mining. As more and more investors and institutions pour into the Bitcoin market, the frequent occurrence of transactions has caused the network load to continue to increase, thereby exacerbating the phenomenon of blank block mining. This imbalance between supply and demand has led to miners choosing to mine blank blocks in order to obtain mining rewards faster, which has to some extent disrupted the normal operation of the Bitcoin network.

In summary, the phenomenon of blank block mining caused by the Bitcoin ecosystem boom is not accidental. It contains multiple factors such as network delay, decentralized characteristics and supply and demand imbalance. To solve the problem of blank block mining, the whole society needs to work together, including strengthening network infrastructure construction, optimizing the communication mechanism between miners and balancing the market supply and demand relationship. Only through joint efforts can the Bitcoin ecosystem develop more healthily and inject new vitality and hope into the future of the digital currency world. May the future of Bitcoin be better!

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Coin Circle (120Btc.com): With the advent of Ordinals
NFT and BRC-20 tokens, the Bitcoin ecosystem has recently seen a resurgence of enthusiasm. At one point, there were more than 400,000 transactions to be confirmed, setting a new record. The transaction fee for high-priority transactions soared to 411 Satoshis; there was even a rare situation where the block fee exceeded the block reward, marking the first time this has happened since 2021.

At the same time, OKLink data showed that this morning (7) at Bitcoin block height 788703, at about 07:16:40 this morning Taiwan time, an empty block (that is, the block only contained a transaction of block reward Coinbase) was mined, and the time interval with the previous block height 788702 was only 14 seconds different. How did the empty block happen?

Why are there "blank" blocks? 

As the name suggests, Bitcoin's empty block means that the block only contains the block of the coin creation transaction (Coinbase only contains the block reward).

Mining is a competition of speed. It depends not only on who finds the solution that meets the system requirements first, but also on broadcasting the solution as soon as possible.

The logic of Bitcoin mining is that in theory, the person who guesses the correct answer the fastest can get all the block rewards. However, if more than two miners produce blocks at almost the same time, resulting in a time difference that cannot be identified by the main network, the one with greater network computing power is identified as the "parent block" and the one with smaller computing power is identified as the "uncle block". However, on the Bitcoin chain, only the parent block can get mining rewards, not the uncle block, so everyone wants to become the parent block, which also leads to the fact that some miners will choose to pack empty blocks for economic considerations.

For example, in a very short period of time, blocks are mined continuously. At this time, miners and nodes need to pack reasonable transactions (transaction parameters that can be connected to the previous block) in a block in a very short time, and upload them to the main network.

In this regard, mainstream and mature nodes may use the most time-saving and reliable way to package blocks at this time to avoid multiple miners competing for parent blocks/uncle blocks. Therefore, one of the most suitable strategies at this time is to upload a blank ledger.

Simply put, the seemingly meaningless thing of blank blocks is actually for "economic considerations", just like the time interval of block height 788702 is only 14 seconds apart. Since no miner wants to become an uncle block, the profit strategy of "packing blank blocks under specific conditions" is adopted.

 Impact on Bitcoin transactions 

However, although blank blocks are not malicious, they will further cause more congestion in the entire Bitcoin network.

When the number of pending transactions is high, the appearance of blank blocks means that the scarce TPS of Bitcoin is wasted, resulting in more transactions to be queued. This may also occur during the peak hours of the Bitcoin network or when a large number of transactions are submitted to the blockchain in a short period of time. This is why the Bitcoin transaction problem has resurfaced due to Ordinals
NFT and BRC-20, triggering community discussions on the shortcomings of Bitcoin block design.

Conclusion

Since its launch in 2008, Bitcoin has indeed had some defects in its mechanism, which has prompted subsequent blockchains to continuously optimize and improve it based on this. Ethereum is a very important example, which has introduced some improvements to solve some problems in Bitcoin.

As for Ethereum, by allowing both parent blocks and uncle blocks to receive rewards, miners are encouraged to pack new transactions as much as they can. This means that Ethereum's block generation mechanism will minimize the economic motivation of miners to mine blank blocks, thereby encouraging miners to try their best to pack new transactions. In Ethereum, transactions in uncle blocks will also be added to the next block, which is equivalent to returning the forked branch chain to the main chain.

In summary, Bitcoin, as the main financial system for digital gold and peer-to-peer value transmission, has huge advantages in overall design. It focuses on security and value storage, emphasizing decentralization and reliability.

Ethereum has been optimized on the basis of Bitcoin and has become a blockchain platform based on smart contracts. It can not only transmit value, but also execute smart contracts, enabling developers to build and run various decentralized applications (dapps). Ethereum provides greater flexibility and programmability, allowing more complex logic and business logic to be implemented on the blockchain.