- The BSV camp is divided over the mining of empty blocks on the blockchain
- Some prominent figures have called the action illegal, while others say it is perfectly valid
- The mining of empty blocks was endorsed by Craig Wright before BSV’s formation
A civil war has erupted inside the BSV camp after its governing body clashed with powerful figures over the legality of empty block mining. The BSV blockchain has been hit with a plethora of empty blocks being mined by an unknown entity, leading to the blockchain becoming unstable and one of its best known apps considering its future. However, while some claim the action is illegal, other notable figures say that the action is well within BSV’s code of conduct seeing as miners have a choice of what they do and don’t process.
‘Dishonest’ Miner Has Taken Over
BSV’s issues started a few days ago when it was realised that the dominant unnamed miner was mining empty blocks, picking up the mining reward while it did so. Such is the miner’s dominance that this meant consecutive blocks were empty, with transactions cluttering up the mempool and getting stuck. The only transactions getting through were those processed by BSV’s other minority miners.
This is not a bug in the proof-of-work consensus mechanism but more of a feature, as miners can choose to process transactions or not, although they miss out on transaction fees by doing so and have the costs of running the equipment.
Such actions wouldn’t have an impact on the Bitcoin network given how decentralised it is, but with a network as centralised as BSV it quickly becomes a crisis when the chief miner acts in such a way.
Bitcoin Association Promises Legal Action
The actions of the ‘dishonest’ miner led to the Bitcoin Association, which actually represents BSV, putting out a startling message yesterday – it considers the mining of empty blocks illegal and has frozen the block rewards. This message was reinforced by BSV’s chief financial backer, Calvin Ayre:
yes…this is theft and vandalism…both crimes. Its also violation of the contract you agree to with your actions when you use the node software and mine.
— Calvin Ayre (@CalvinAyre) October 17, 2022f
However, this same sentiment doesn’t seem to be backed by one very important figure in the BSV landscape – its ideological head, Craig Wright, an Australian man who says he is Satoshi Nakamoto and that BSV represents his vision.
At the time of BSV’s inception in 2018, Mr Wright penned this regarding the mining of empty blocks:
Mining an empty chain (such as on ABC) is a part of the protocol. In fact, you are breaking the rules expecting a miner to mine your TX. Any validation is a contract. A miner can set the fees to any amount they desire, and reject all other transactions. This is defined in the original Bitcoin white paper.
Another large miner, Gorillapool, also agreed that the miner had done nothing wrong and that it was up to other miners to better secure the network:
I don’t remember asking for your opinion. Or their’s.
— GorillaPool.com🍌🍌JungleBus™ Coming Soon (@MineLikeAnApe) October 17, 2022
The fact is that there is nothing in the BSV mining ‘contract’ (essentially the Bitcoin whitepaper) that says miners will be penalised for mining empty blocks, and any legal challenge will be met with opposition using Wright’s own message as much as anything.
Apps Suffering
The issue has also led to popular apps such as Handcash considering changing their infrastructure to cope with the persistent BSV issues:
This will force us to take a s step back and consider going back towards more traditional approach which is also used by other blockchains, which is not very exciting.
— Ivan Mlinarić (@eyeone) October 16, 2022
The unknown miner, which many actually suspect to be a chinese miner mempool.com, will clearly not pursue this indefinitely due to cost, but the fact that it was able to influence the BSV blockchain in such a critical way, whilst also exposing an ideological rift in the camp, makes it a very interesting prospect should it happen again.
