Not too long ago, the ViaBTC Bitcoin mining pool received some negative attention due to them mining a growing amount of empty network blocks. Ever since that time, however, the pool has turned things around, and no empty blocks were produced in the past month. This is a positive development for the mining pool, as it is now the best SPV base mining pool, according to the pool owners.
A Positive Turn Of Events For ViaBTC
Mining pools in the Bitcoin world have a few things they need to get right at all times. One of those requirements revolves around not mining empty blocks on the network, as they create quite some controversy among Bitcoin community members. It is important to note empty blocks are not entirely empty, as they still contain one coinbase transaction to allocate the mining reward.
Empty blocks are not easier, cheaper, or quicker to mine compared to regular bitcoin network block either, though. There is no reason to mine empty blocks on purpose, and it is highly unlikely ViaBTC ever intended to do so. That said, their rate of empty blocks had to be adjusted before things were getting out of hand.
Over the past few weeks, ViaBTC operators made a lot of changes to reduce their number of empty blocks. In fact, statistics indicate they mined 248 blocks, of which zero were empty. The average block size mined on this pool was 899,622 bytes, which is on par with all other mining pools. It is good to see ViaBTC take the necessary steps to become the best in the SPV base mining pool.
ViaBTC produce ZERO empty block in the last month. Best in SPV base mining pool. pic.twitter.com/Rdez03dBNo
— ViaBTC (@ViaBTC) January 16, 2017
GBMiners and BitFury had no empty blocks either in the last months. HaoBTC had the most, with 2.52% of their 238 blocks being empty. Variation in the number of empty Bitcoin blocks is not all that strange, mind you, but it is something to keep an eye on moving forward. Overall, it looks like all Bitcoin mining pools in the top 10 are doing a fine job at keeping empty blocks to a minimum.
While this positive change is good news for ViaBTC, the pool’s hashrate seems to be flattening a bit. The past month saw ViiaBTC reach an average of 5.37% of all mining hashpower, making it the seventh-largest pool. They are in between Slushpool and HaoBTC, yet it seems unlikely these rankings will change anytime soon. Antpool remains the biggest Bitcoin mining pool, with nearly 19.5% of all network hashrate in the past months.
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