Bitcoin Association Asks Exchanges to Block 'Empty Block' Bitcoin SV Miner

Bitcoin Association has asked crypto exchanges and miners to block a miner of Bitcoin SV, a cryptocurrency that was born through a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash, amid a seemingly ongoing "empty block" barrage.

The association said that the miner was producing empty blocks on Bitcoin SV. The miner, who operates by the address "1KPSTuJMCMRXrTWHfCwpiRZg1ALbJzh844," changes their coinbase string with a constantly changing string, according to Bitcoin Association.

Empty blocks refer to a block produced on any blockchain network that does not keep any transactional data other than the data required to generate that transaction, and require the same computation resources as used by a normal block. Empty blocks are often criticized as “bad behavior," creating little value for the network by accelerating disinflation and stealing from “honest” miners.

The Bitcoin Association said that the miner is ignoring the tens of millions of broadcasted fee-paying transactions in favor of producing empty blocks, which has caused strain on the network.

Some in the BSV community said miners were within their rights to mine empty blocks and were simply doing so because an economic decision had them deem the block subsidy itself a sufficient reward. "They wouldn’t bother with the workload of validating millions of transactions because the fees are too cheap to justify including them even in aggregate," wrote Todd Price, a curriculum specialist at Bitcoin Association.

The Bitcoin Association for BSV is a Switzerland-based non-profit company that supports the development of BSV and BSV-centric startups and enterprises. BSV is a fork, or splinter currency, of the Bitcoin fork Bitcoin Cash whose block size is determined by market forces rather than being fixed.