i always wondered why that happened, thanks for explaining.

I pondered a few days over the MM issue and came with the conclusion that we will have to make bitcoin client "smarter", like the people that use it, to avoid issues like this. The easier way to try solving empty blocks issue would be:

- track source ip of incoming txs in memory
- client wouldn't accept only blocks from other peers, while working normally (not downloading blockchain), should have at least a few txs from that peer in memory
- blocks should contain at least one incoming transaction from that peer

Empty blocks are like blank pages in a book but they come with a prize for the miner even when not writing anything on it. I know sometimes even big pools can come up with a <1 sec empty block (freebie) so it will be the miners election if they want a better network quality (no empty blocks) or situations like this in the future.

TL;DR Miners will have to decide over the MM issue with their hashing power.

Just lock this nonsense thread. Please.

As a bitcoin user I'm not being harmed in any way whatsoever.

And I say that greedy miners can go fuck themselves.
All others who think this is bad for Bitcoin for so and so reasons: You have no proof whatsoever. IRC bragging won't hold up in any court anywhere. Just quit it. It's for the best.

Speaking of evidence, it would seem that luke-jr has made some changes to bitcoind that allowed him to log the actual ip addresses that are pushing out these blocks.

https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/70580.msg812474#msg812474

While most of us in the thread may be greedy miners, we are the only way transaction happen within the network. So unless everyone is ready for bitcoin to fail, might as well let us greedy miners have our fun.

Were your TXes guaranteed to be confirmed in some specific timeframe ?

This^^ 1000x this^^

But I changed my opinion. Let this thread be. This way we learn who are the persons who use Bitcoin for it's properties and the one's that just want to make a quick buck and who'll turn their back and go away the moment it stops being profitable for them.

Whew. I was getting worried there.

Maybe he was just trying to make a quick buck:

If the botnets pwn the network, you will have this:

PSY, if you have no interest in mining then go away. I make plenty of money with mining and bitcoin in general.

Somehow you suddenly decided to allow us to continue discussing a topic that you have no control over. This is what I was commenting on.

And you are discussing a topic YOU also have no control over. You wished you had, but you don't. And when I say you I'm not saying you, gigavps, I mean all of you.
How dares he, to mine a pseudo-anonymous currency while wishing to remain anonymous...  

I'll risk to say that those 30(?) BFL singles you are expecting are the best way you have to fight it.

And it's not PSY, it's psy.

To me this is really simple. Make it worth while for miners to accept your transactions. If you pay a higher transaction fee more mining power will play nice and compete to pull in your transaction.

Have a look at the last 10 blocks. None of them have total fee that gets close to 0.1 BTC. Compare that to the 50 BTC block reward.

If I for some reason had access to a huge set of idle computers and wanted them to mine for me I'd have to develop/maintain/update software that effectively turns it into a distributed system. My software would be easier to develop/manage (and more stealthy) if I didn't have to push pending transactions around. With the current fees it is simply not worth the extra hassle.

In other words: If I had 10% of the total mining power, what would be my incentive to pull transactions into my block? Nothing. Don't give me that "I'll do it for the greater good" crap, this is not how the world works. The other 90% make sure that my coins can be spent and keep their value.