Miners process almost empty blocks on the Bitcoin network

In recent weeks, the Bitcoin network has witnessed a phenomenon that has captured the attention of the community: several blocks processed by the miners have an unusually low number of transactions, not counting the coinbase transaction, which gives the reward to the miner that selected the block.

This behavior, although not new in the history of Bitcoin, has generated a debate among users and experts about their implications for the operation and future of the network.

Certain blocks, among many others, identified at the height of 890410, 890402 or 890388, according to current Mempool data, They show a minimum activity in the Bitcoin network.

For example, block 890410, processed on April 1, 2025 by F2POOL, included 1,282 transactions, beyond the coinbase transaction, indicating that the block space was filled up to less than half of its capacity, according to the graphic representation provided by the Mempool platform.

Block 890388, mined by Foundry, even included less transactions: 1.110. Other blocks, such as 890387, also have a volume of low transactions.

The amount of BTC transactions included in a block It depends on how many people or entities are sending them at a given time. If there is little activity in the network (for example, for hours of less use or in regions where it is at dawn), the mempool (the «tail» of pending transactions) may be almost empty, resulting in blocks with few transactions.

It should be noted that other reasons can decrease the amount of transactions in a bitcoin block. For example, the individual confirmation times of each one, producing that a block mined immediately after another and causing few transactions to enter the new one.

However, the quantity and regularity of half full blocks in recent days and weeks indicates that the main reason for the phenomenon is due to low network activity, which is confirmed by taking a look at the Bitcoin network rates: approximately of 1 a 3 village/vb at the time of writing.

What do the half -empty blocks imply in Bitcoin?

Low network transactions have certain consequences. Miners who process blocks without transactions or with a low number of them cannot Collect enough associated commissionsan aspect that could become more relevant as block rewards decrease over time due to programmed Bitcoin halves, as cryptootics reported. While the bitcoin price can rise and compensate for the reduction of the block subsidy, it is expected that BTC miners will win less and less rewards.

The opinions within the Bitcoin community about the phenomenon of low network transactions are divided. On the one hand, there are those who consider that the half -empty blocks represent a significant problem for Bitcoin.

Nicholas Gregory (@Gregory_nico) who initially highlighted the problem in X, expressed his concern on March 31, 2025, arguing that empty blocks reflect a lack of real use of Bitcoin For commercial transactions.

For Gregory, if participants do not encourage broader use of the network and do not stop staying with the narrative of «digital gold», Bitcoin could face long -term problems, especially with regard to the economic sustainability of the miners, who depend more and more on the commissions per transaction as the rewards per block decrease.

I hope that at some point the bitcoiners realize that this space is more than only podcasts, X Spaces and the narrative of digital gold that «the numbers rise.» If we do not get people to use bitcoin for real trade, the game is over.

Nicholas Gregory, software engineer.

This perspective is aligned with the idea that Bitcoin is mainly a decentralized payments protocol that depends on the economic activity in its network. This idea is related to that expressed by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Whitepaper originally from Bitcoin, where this cryptoactive is characterized as a P2P system of digital payments.

In a similar line, Eli Ben-Sasson (@elibesson), the Starknet co-founder, an L2 that connects Ethereum with Bitcoin, suggested that the solution to increase economic activity in Bitcoin could go through implementing technical improvements. For example, the activation of a Stark verifier, by means of proposals such as On_catwhich would allow greater functionality and, potentially, a greater volume of transactions.

Other users have contributed nuances to the discussion. Luke dashjr (@lukedashjr, in x) a well -known Bitcoin developer, commented that they do not presume that these middle block events represent a real problem for Bitcoin. «It’s fine. Real trade does not need huge blocks,» said one of the co -founders of the Pool Ocean of decentralized mining.

For his part, the user identified as D_osem pointed out that the empty blocks are, in fact, a healthy signal in the Bitcoin Network, which behaves according to demand and supply cycles. «Actually, it is a good signal. Like any evolution technology, Bitcoin crosses cycles: some periods are of high traffic and explosives, others are quieter. A pause in chain activity does not mean a failure; it means that the system is maturing,» said the user.

The debate on the empty blocks in Bitcoin highlights the tensions inherent to a decentralized system, where the individual incentives expected by the miners do not always coincide with the expectations and the use of the users.

For now, the Bitcoin network continues to work within its established parameters, but the discussion on how to balance the efficiency of the mined with the transaction processing capacity remains open.

Some developers such as Eli Ben-Sasson propose solutions that virtually increased network activity, which would reduce the amount of middle blocks.

The ordinals, a kind of NFT in Bitcoin, solved, or tried to do so, this same problem, at least from the perspective of some miners, who saw how the rates paid by block increased, although at the expense of normal users, who had to pay more to send transactions.

However, these non -fungible tokens fell into irrelevance, and at the moment There is no similar magnitude technical solution that is demonstrating to be able to raise the use of the network The Bitcoin.