Ocean Block Fee Dispute Raises Questions About Miner Control
A developer says an Ocean miner left his Bitcoin transaction out of block 973, 817. A comparison he shared estimated that the block collected 7.68% less in transaction fees than an expected template. The figures raise questions about miner choice and potential fee income, but they do not show that the transaction was available to the miner or deliberately censored.
- Kruw accused Ocean miner “Powre” of excluding his consolidation transaction.
- The reported 7.68% shortfall concerns transaction fees, not the full block reward.
- Ocean’s DATUM setup gives miners control over the transactions they try to include.
- The miner’s reason and any effect on TIDES payouts remain unresolved.
What the comparison showed
In an Oct. 30 exchange on X, developer Kruw accused Powre of leaving his consolidation transaction out of Bitcoin block 973, 817. A consolidation transaction combines smaller amounts of bitcoin into fewer outputs, often to make later spending simpler.
Kruw called the block “partially emptied” and argued that leaving fees uncollected could hurt other miners in the pool. The comparison he shared showed an expected template with 3, 580 transactions and about 3.99 million weight units. The mined block had 1, 698 transactions and about 2.93 million weight units.
It showed rounded transaction-fee totals of 0.017 BTC for the expected template and 0.016 BTC for the block, and reported a 7.68% shortfall. Those rounded totals do not, on their own, produce that precise percentage. The unrounded figures, calculation method and assumptions behind the expected template are not established by the information available here.
The comparison also highlighted a transaction with a fee of 223 satoshis and a displayed rate of 0.15 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB). It was shown as first seen four minutes before the block. That timestamp does not tell us when, or whether, the transaction reached Powre’s node. Nodes can receive transactions at different times, and a transaction appearing in one node’s mempool does not prove that every miner had it available.
The reported 7.68% figure compares transaction-fee income. It does not mean the full block reward was 7.68% lower, and the information provided does not show that every TIDES participant’s payout fell by that amount.
Who should choose a block’s transactions?
Ocean’s DATUM setup lets miners build their own block templates, or proposed sets of transactions to include in a block. In this arrangement, individual miners have more say over transaction selection instead of relying entirely on a pool’s template builder.
Chris, an Ocean-associated participant in the exchange, defended that discretion while acknowledging that passing up available fees could be economically questionable. He said those fees could benefit participants in TIDES, Ocean’s payout system. He argued that rewards should follow TIDES’ rules for contributed proof of work, not Ocean’s approval of a miner’s transaction choices.
“TIDES rewards contributed pow according to our payout rules, not whether OCEAN approves of a miner’s tx selection.”
Kruw proposed that Ocean reject work that failed to meet a fee-collection standard. His suggested message was: “Rejected share, check mempool connectivity.” He also argued that miners should be able to build templates and capture profits a centralized authority might miss.
That proposal leaves a difficult practical question: what counts as an acceptable fee total? Chris asked whether the threshold should be 99% of a hypothetical maximum, 95%, or something else. He also asked how a pool could account for private transactions, propagation delays and differences among mempools.
A mempool is the set of unconfirmed transactions a node has received and may consider for inclusion in a block. Nodes can have different mempools, and miners may use different transaction-selection policies. An expected template is a benchmark, not proof that every transaction in it was visible to a particular miner or could have been included under that miner’s rules.
What the fee shortfall does, and does not, show
Chris’s main point is that a block earning less than a hypothetical maximum does not, on its own, prove censorship. The comparison gives people reason to ask why the block collected fewer fees. It does not show what Powre’s node had received, when it received it, or why the transaction was left out.
The displayed rate of 0.15 sat/vB makes transaction availability especially relevant. Fee rates and relay policies can affect which transactions nodes accept and forward. The figure alone does not show whether Powre could see the transaction in time. Assessing that would require the transaction ID, its dependencies and contemporaneous information about its propagation.
A lower fee total does not automatically make the miner’s choice sensible. If Powre had the transaction available and chose to omit it despite its fees, pool participants could reasonably ask why. The comparison does not establish that this happened, or whether the difference affected actual TIDES payouts.
The disputed transaction should not be confused with a CoinJoin. Kruw described it as a consolidation transaction. Chris said he supports CoinJoins and financial privacy, and wants more CoinJoins, PayJoins and anchor transactions included. The exchange does not show that the transaction at issue was a CoinJoin or that privacy concerns led to its omission.
DATUM gives individual miners more control over transaction selection. It does not guarantee that every miner will maximize fees or remove every form of mining concentration. More autonomy gives miners room to follow different policies, and gives others room to question those choices.
Key questions and answers
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Was Kruw’s transaction censored?
Kruw alleged deliberate exclusion, but the available information does not establish intent. It also does not show whether the transaction had reached Powre’s node when the block template was assembled.
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What does the reported 7.68% figure measure?
It is a reported shortfall in transaction-fee income compared with an expected template. It is not a documented reduction of that size in the full block reward or any participant’s payout.
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Why is the expected fee total uncertain?
Nodes may have different mempools, and miners may select transactions differently. The comparison’s underlying data and calculation are not established, so its expected total cannot be treated as a definitive measure of the fees Powre could have collected.
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Should Ocean reject work that collects fewer fees?
Kruw argued for a profitability check. Chris questioned how a fair threshold could account for differences in transaction visibility. Any such rule would need a clearly defined benchmark and reliable data on which transactions were available to the miner.
Decentralized mining gives individual miners room to make choices, rather than leaving every transaction decision to a pool. That freedom is worth preserving, but it does not put those choices beyond scrutiny. Here, the fee comparison raises a legitimate question. It does not settle the allegation.
