A couple of years ago empty blocks started to pop up and i never heard a good reason that this would ever happen. The best argument was that it was slightly faster so miners would do it.

I am curious does mining an empty block provide an advantage in solving blocks in any way. For example, maybe the block header is unchanged for an empty block even as new blocks are mined. A miner could simply try and solve the same block indefinitely until the solution is found and they they can stick the empty block into the chain and receive the reward.... Would this somehow provide an advantage over people trying to solve full blocks?