bitcoin (BTC) is a digital currency renowned for its durability, security, and reliability. On average, a new block is added to the network every ten minutes, and the miner who successfully creates the block is rewarded with 6.25 Bitcoin, which is equivalent to almost $130,000.

On the other hand, the Bitcoin blockchain has been known to surprise observers and players alike at times.

Nodes around the network confirmed the existence of a totally empty block at the height of 776,339 blocks. The fact that the block was uploaded to the Bitcoin network with no transactions included caused great consternation among those involved in the cryptocurrency industry. What exactly does the term “empty block” mean and how does this phenomenon occur?

For starters, while the presence of an empty block in the network may seem peculiar at first, these kinds of things are quite common. Block 774486 was where it happened a little over two weeks a day ago.

Miners are encouraged to mine blocks as quickly as possible, and as a result, they can mine a block even if they have not yet received any transactions that they can include in the block. When this happens, the block will still be empty.

The following rationale can be found on the Bitcoin mempool, which is the primary location for research on the Bitcoin blockchain: “When a new block is found, mining pools will give miners a block template that does not include any transactions. This will allow them to ask them to start looking for the next block as quickly as possible. They immediately transmit a block template that is full with transactions, but a full block template is a larger data transfer and goes to the miners after a slightly longer period of time.

“During this interim period, which often lasts no more than a second or two, miners sometimes get lucky and discover a new block using the empty block template.”

In essence, mining a template was a case of “getting lucky” for miners. The Bitcoin block with a height of 776,389 was added to the chain just seconds after the previous block, which had a height of 776,488. However, block 776,388 received an additional 0.086 BTC in fees, which equates to around of $1,854. This amount was added to the block reward of 6.25 BTC, which is approximately $135,247.

Even when there are no transactions on an empty block, the miner is still rewarded with newly created bitcoins as part of the block reward. As a result, the reward for Block 776,389 was 6.25 Bitcoin and there were no transaction fees. The winning miner was Binance Pool, which contributed up to 12% to the overall hash rate of the network.

It is essential to emphasize the fact that empty blocks do not represent a challenge for the network. The mining of empty blocks still results in the production of the coin creation transaction, sometimes referred to as a base coin transaction. This transaction ensures that Bitcoin is on track to meet its goal of having 21 million Bitcoins in circulation.

The proportion of vacant blocks in the network is usually between 1% and 2%, as shown by the statistics provided by BitInfoCharts. Given the proliferation of “ordinals” in Bitcoin, aka the ability to permanently carve photos, data, and marks into the blockchain, this statistic is all the more shocking in light of its current state.

The rise in ordinals has generated several inquiries and even some anxiety among the Bitcoin community, with the first instances of pornography only recently being documented.

As more and more image aficionados compete to have their work included on the Bitcoin blockchain, the mempool has become a more congested place and block space has become a contested resource.