Flash Bounty: Miners
Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) relies on miners to execute transactions on-chain. Miners have the ability to order transactions any how they deem fit, and decide which block to mine among other things. Every block differs with the number of transactions (tx_count) it contains, and the higher the tx_count, the larger the miner fee. So let’s analyze Ethereum blocks and see if some miners prefer some blocks over others.
Ethereum PoW has about 5,620 unique miners working to secure the chain. Looking at tx_count over the history of the chain, the minimum is zero (0), the average is 109.9, and the maximum is 1,431. Based on this, we define low tx_count blocks as those below average, and high tx_count blocks as those above average.
Some miners like 0xea674 and 0x5a0b5 do not discriminate as they are observed to be mining large amounts of both low and high tx_count blocks. Others like 0x61c80 and 0x4bb96 are seen to be only mining high tx_count blocks, and 0x002e0 is seen mining only low tx_count blocks. But you can see that there’s a scramble for high tx_count blocks as compared to lower tx_count blocks.
0xea674 has mined 21% of all blocks, followed by 0x5a0b with 13.2%, and 0x829bd with 10.2%. Low tx_count blocks and high tx_count blocks are mined in the ratio of 1:1 but low tx_count blocks are slightly higher.
The daily average of tx_count over time has been hoovering between 150 and 200 except for some days where it breaks the upper threshold.
In summary, we learned that the top miners do not discriminate between low tx_count and high tx_count blocks. However, some miners are able to mine only low tx_count blocks due to the fierce competition at the top and the scramble for high tx_count blocks which generates more rewards.