Block 501,726 did not include transactions and was undermined by a “unknown” miner.
The 12.5 BTC not claimed were lost forever.
In the vast history of Bitcoin, compressed in 15 years, there are events that, although small in the great scheme of the network, arouse curiosity about their rarity. One of them occurred on December 30, 2017, when block 501,726 was mined without including transactions, without claiming the 12.5 BTC reward and without a trace of its person responsible. This episode, registered in the Mempool of Bitcoin as the work of a “unknown” miner, remains one of the most curious episodes in the history of the network.
In December 2017, Bitcoin’s price It was around $ 15,000 per unit. Each mining block awarded a fixed reward of 12.5 BTC, in addition to the commissions for transactions.
One day, to Block height 501,726something went wrong, or at least the regular events were diverted: not only did transactions were included, but also claimed Neither the block subsidy nor the transaction rates of the network users. In economic terms, this meant a loss of approximately $ 187,000 at Bitcoin value at that time.
The inevitable question is: why a Bitcoin miner, after investing significant resources in solving the puzzle necessary to validate a block, would renounce its reward?
The answer is not clear, but several hypotheses have been raised. One is that it was a technical error. Mining software or node configuration could have failed, generating an empty block and omitting the transaction coinbasewhich is what allows the miner to claim his reward.
Another indicates that it was an inexperienced miner, perhaps someone experiencing with the Bitcoin network without fully understanding its operation.
It has also been speculated that the block could be subject to a technical test, where the objective was not to obtain profits, but observe the behavior of the network before an anomalous case.
The Bitcoin Mempool, which records the details of each block, offers few additional clues. The miner who undermined that block appears as “unknown”an indication that he did not identify with a known mining pool or that he did not leave a clear firm in the block.
What is evident is that the Bitcoin network, designed to be robust and decentralized, did not flinch at this incident. The 501,726 block was validated and added to the chain without problems, and the posterior miners continued to build on it as if nothing had happened.
The 12.5 BTC not claimed, however, were lost forever, since the protocol rules They do not allow them to recover them once the block is confirmed. Only approximately 20 minutes before block 501,726, it happened Another empty block In Bitcoin, although antpool, the mining pool that undermined it, He did claim his rewards, but did not include transactions in it.
The empty blocks, then, are not unknown in the network. They can occur when a miner validates a block just after another, before there is time to include pending transactions. This is explained by Mempool.Space in his Technical documentation:
When a new block is located, mining pools usually send new block templates to miners before validating it completely, often even before receiving it. During this time, it is not possible to select transactions for the next block, since the pool does not know with certainty what transactions they conflict with the already undermined. While empty blocks do not add additional transactions to the block chain, they do contribute to the general security of transactions that are already in it.
Mempool.space, Bitcoin block explorer.
But not claiming the reward does an unusual phenomenon, a reminder that even in a system designed to maximize efficiency, anomalies are possible.
The 501,726 block did not alter Bitcoin’s course, but remains a footnote in its history, as a reminder that behind each transaction and each block there are decisions, configurations and sometimes mistakes.
