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I can't figure why this block has 0 coinbase with 0 transactions... however still a valid block? Or it it empty? According to whalepanda this coinbase was sacrificed by unknown miner.

See the block at height 501,726

2 Answers 2

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It has no transactions other than the coinbase transaction. However, the transaction's coinbase output is 0 BTC. Here's the valuable piece of information that you are looking for:

Coinbase outputs may be set lower than the max. value (12.5 currently), and the block will be valid (if the difficulty is lower than the target, as always)

Also look at: https://btc.com/0000000000004c78956f8643262f3622acf22486b120421f893c0553702ba7b5

BTW, the miner loses money, for the price of being "cool".

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  • 1
    i dont see anything special about this block btc.com/…
    – user380208
    Commented Dec 30, 2017 at 17:50
  • also why this block has more than 50 btc in coinbase output? 124,725 block -btc.com/…
    – user380208
    Commented Dec 30, 2017 at 17:51
  • @anacondabitch: The coinbase transaction output can be, at most, the sum of the block reward plus the total of all transaction fees of other transactions in the block. So this block had BTC 0.13 in transaction fees. btc.com appears to display coinbase transactions in a confusing way; if you look at other block explorers (e.g. blockchain.info/block-index/139575/…) it is more clear what is happening. Commented Dec 30, 2017 at 18:00
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    @anacondabitch: You're misreading it. This block had a total of 8 transactions. One was the coinbase, seven had no fees, and the eighth had a fee of BTC 0.01. So the coinbase was allowed to be up to BTC 50.01. The miner chose to claim 49.99999999 instead, effectively destroying the remaining BTC 0.01000001. Commented Dec 30, 2017 at 18:41
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    @anacondabitch: I think the issue is that btc.com takes the value of the coinbase c;aimed, subtracts the block reward, and displays the result as "fees". In the normal case, the maximum coinbase is claimed, which is in fact reward plus fees, so this number does equal the fees. When the maximum coinbase is not claimed, this number can look funny or negative and doesn't accurately reflect the fees in the block. Commented Dec 30, 2017 at 18:44
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Block contains "RSKBLOCK:Ý¿QzßýKÊwQP[9É: ÔyüN9ÝW³GÆ$", so I think that it is related to www.rsk.co. Probably Sidechains synchronization.

EDIT: Binary hex: "52534b424c4f434b3addbf517adf8ffd4bca7751505b39c9013a0d1fd479fc4e901b39dd57b347c624"
Source: https://blockchain.info/tx/9bf8853b3a823bbfa1e54017ae11a9e1f4d08a854dcce9f24e08114f2c921182?show_adv=true

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  • what is that scary string?looks like some extraterrestrial code RSKBLOCK:Ý¿QzßýKÊwQP[9É: ÔyüN9ÝW³GÆ$
    – user380208
    Commented Dec 30, 2017 at 17:44
  • 2
    That string is not meant to be converted to text. Rather it is just binary for a RSK block hash. When converted to text, it looks to be a weird string.
    – Ava Chow
    Commented Dec 30, 2017 at 17:59
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    @AndrewChow Well, the first 9 characters seem to be meaningful in text. Commented Dec 30, 2017 at 23:47
  • How did you converted hex: "52534b424c4f434b3addbf517adf8ffd4bca7751505b39c9013a0d1fd479fc4e901b39dd57b347c624" into ASCII ... any idea?
    – user380208
    Commented Dec 31, 2017 at 20:54
  • 3
    @anacondabitch try to search "hex to ASCII" on Google
    – CoperNick
    Commented Dec 31, 2017 at 23:36

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