Mining empty blocks is spiking on Ethereum – that could be a problem

Mining crypto is all about the money so why would miners leave transaction fee rewards on the table?

The number of mined empty blocks has been increasing on the Ethereum blockchain at a steep rate – a 637% increase since September.

There has also been a rise recently in “empties” produced by the Bitmain-controlled Antpool bitcoin mining pool. Twelve empty blocks were produced by Antpool on 5 October, and this is happening on a fairly regular basis.

Some mining pools are accused, alternately, of either deliberately mining empty blocks to increase fees or as being part of an attack on bitcoin in the case of Bitmain’s Antpool. The sums involved are minuscule compared to Bitmain’s profit of $1.1 billion for the first quarter of 2018 alone.

The answer could be a lot simpler – some miners are tempted by the possibility of being paid for doing nothing, or very little.

When a miner finds a block they create the first transaction known as the coinbase, the reward for which is…