Can I mine a block with no transactions other than the coinbase?

Question

Based on what I read, there is this script to build the Merkle root

import hashlib     
def dblsha(data):      
    return hashlib.sha256(hashlib.sha256(data).digest()).digest()     
 
txnlist = [coinbase] + [binascii.a2b_hex(a['data']) for a in template['transactions']]     
merklehashes = [dblsha(t) for t in txnlist]     
while len(merklehashes) > 1:     
     if len(merklehashes) % 2:     
        merklehashes.append(merklehashes[-1])      
    merklehashes = [dblsha(merklehashes[i] + merklehashes[i + 1]) for i in range(0, len(merklehashes), 2)]      
merkleroot = merklehashes[0]        
   

I wanted to mine an empty block (a block with only a coinbase transaction in it) , can I modify the script so that txnlist only includes coinbase and ignore the other transactions? or it is considered a hard fork?

txnlist = [coinbase]       
 

Or this isn't the correct way to mine empty block?

I currently only have a shallow understanding of Bitcoin, that's why I ask.

Answer 1

Yes.

A block is valid even with no transactions other than the coinbase transaction. There have been many such blocks. This is especially true for early blocks of the blockchain.

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• Close to 19% of mined Bitcoin blocks were empty - Steven Zheng. October 17, 2018
• A total of 71 empty blocks were mined in the first five months of 2020, accounting for 0.3% of the total blocks produced

(source: Cointelegraph)