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According to this answer, miners can include extra data in blocks.

Is there an upper bound to how much a miner can add? How much?

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The maximum size of a block is 1MB. A block can be filled entirely with arbitrary data.

Namecoin actually puts its extra data into the "coinbase" parameter, which is specifically designed to hold arbitrary data. Data put here is limited to 100 bytes, and this data will in the future be safely forgotten by most clients.

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I don't believe a block can be filled completely with arbitrary data. A block must contain valid transactions. Transactions can contain extra information which have meaning beyond the transaction & block (for example namecoin hash, public messages, etc).

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A block does not have to contain any transactions at all (except the "fake transaction" that generates the block reward). Miners choose which transactions to include, if any. – ripper234 Oct 10 '11 at 14:03
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Obviously any data added still needs to comply with the protocol requirements. I'm pretty sure it would be OK to add 1MB of data to the coinbase transaction, though (with many outputs, each filled with the max amount of data). – theymos Oct 10 '11 at 18:42
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