Why are some bitcoin blocks empty? Orange Surf from the mempool.space team joins me to explain his recent research report on this topic. We discuss: Why do empty blocks happen? Comparing empty block rates across mining pools Firmware and config differences Timestamps: (00:00) - Intro (00:44) - Orange Surf’s research report on empty blocks (02:02) - Block interval data sets (06:25) - What is an empty block? (08:09) - What causes an empty block to occur? (11:35) - Nuances of a working of a miner; switching from empty to full block templates (14:05) - Differences in the empty block performance (19:01) - Antpool’s internal miner firmware (21:30) - Sponsors (25:00) - Effective management of block templates by mining pools (34:54) - Ocean's empty blocks (36:08) - Mining decentralisation and proxy pools (41:07) - Sponsors (42:14) - Mining templates & pool payouts (44:57) - Upcoming mempool features (49:06) - Outro Links: Empty Block Report: https://research.mempool.space/empty-block-report/ Pool Reserve: https://orange.surf/pool-reserves/ Enterprise: mempool.space/enterprise Community Sponsors: mempool.space/sponsor Sponsors: Swan.com (code LIVERA) CoinKite.com (code LIVERA) Mempool.space Stephan Livera links: Follow me on X: @stephanlivera Subscribe to the podcast Subscribe to Substack