Can Miners Influence the Network for Their Own Gain?

Been digging into the mempool and it’s kinda wild how blocks get mined. Got me thinking, can miners actually mess with the network to score some extra cash with fake incentives?

Blocks aren't capped by a specific transaction count. It's all about the megabyte limit. Some transactions take up more space, so miners usually stuff blocks with the highest fee ones. Sure, that's a bit of manipulation, but it means high-fee transactions get prioritized.

Absolutely, the number of transactions varies based on their size. Blocks are limited by total byte size, not by how many transactions are in them. So, you could have fewer big ones or a bunch of small ones, depending on what's waiting to be processed.

Seriously, this could've been so simple for you. Just click on those blocks to see what’s inside. The sizes matter more than the number of transactions. For example, block 78125 has 406 transactions, while 78127 has 2218, but they’re similar in size.

I get it, that's how Bitcoin was set up. Miners can pick and choose which transactions to include and could even skip high-fee ones if they want. It’s designed that way, but yeah, it can be manipulated too.

But who actually does that? Greed drives the whole Bitcoin transaction scene. A few mining pools tried messing with transaction selection, but the rest just ignored them, so those ideas faded.

I’ve noticed empty blocks popping up on Ethereum. What if on Bitcoin, major miners decide to only fill blocks with high-fee transactions when they control 78% of the hashrate? That could shake things up if mining becomes unprofitable.

Mempool can show transaction status, but it’s not the whole story. Many factors like congestion and fees influence transaction speed. Gotta check various sources to really understand what’s going on.

Yeah, they could, but then blocks would be half-empty, and they'd lose money. Low-fee transactions would just get processed by other pools that fill up their blocks. Even with a chunk of hash power, they'd just slow things down.

Wait, if miners can add their own transactions to blocks, isn't that a form of manipulation too?

From what I see, there’s a 50% chance of manipulation in the market. Back in 2017, news about miners shutting down in China led to a crash. Nowadays, with the mining difficulty so high, if miners shut off their rigs, they’d lose money. They need to keep mining to recoup costs.