They might not want to generate empty blocks, they might not even be trying to. They just are.
-Dave
This could be the case but it's still a poor excuse not to improve. Their entire service is based on mining blocks and the transaction/rewards to be as profitable as possible for their miners. Transactions are the biggest reason for a miner to choose a PPLNS pool, so not doing everything possible to avoid empty blocks is just letting down your clients. On the flip side of that Miners exist to process these transactions, so if there is even 1 in the mempool it should damn well be in the block. I haven't been on slush for quite some time, but I think the problem has been they are big enough they don't care. There have been a lot of complaints about things like the merged mining rewards, and nothing has come of it. Unfortunately a lot of people just get complacent and don't reevaluate often enough, and if they are still make mad bank on the fees for the blocks mined without facing any real consequence where's there incentive to improve.
Well, they ARE doing something, just maybe not what you were expecting:
| | Empty block mining elimination
In Stratum V2, it is equally as efficient for pools to send full blocks for miners to begin working on as it is for them to send empty blocks (i.e. blocks that dont contain any transactions). Since there is no extra delay caused by sending a full block, the incentive to send an empty block is eliminated. | Stratum V2
No extra delay to send a full block vs. an empty block. | Stratum V1
Slower to send a full block than an empty block. |
You could say they conceded defeat and decided to address the issue at the protocol level between miners and pool rather than within the pool itself.
Discussing V2 probably deserves its own thread, i wonder why they haven't started one yet. The proposal is still open to change and even a large Chinese pool has shown interest in implementing it.