This block was finalized 21 mins ago from now and there is one exactly like this waiting to get finalized Here is the link of that. Both of them had 0 transaction, 0 block reward, 0 extra data, 0 gas burned and a 0x0000000000000000 nounce. I have 2 question.
Not my answer! But since this was asked 4 days ago and I was curious too about this, here's what I found.
Miners mine empty blocks during the time it takes them to download new transactions, which is circa 100ms. If they happen to find a valid block during that time, they broadcast it to the network, collecting base reward.
They won't get transactions fees but will still get a block reward.
Update:
It could be a vanity block, maybe. This is a block where someone pays a higher fee than any txs fees, just to claim the ownership of that block.
Here's an interesting thread on Reddit where they talk about this and expose one of such vanity blocks.
This is the block, it has just 1 tx and is just a few hours apart from the block of the OP. The tweet announcing the ownership of that block, lol.
In the recent Devcon 6 Bogota A BUG was mentioned named as Non optimal block production i.e Random production of 0/few tx blocks which is an optimisation problem.
I'm not sure, but i found these agreeable points before that
When they make empty blocks there will be more waiting transactions in the block. Rewards can be increased over time by,
The base fee will drop so type 0 transactions will have a higher tip.
Users will increase their tips because they want their transactions to go through.
There will be more transactions in the pending pool so more higher-value transactions from which block builders can include in the block.
Inevitable block validation time lag and its consequences on mining fresh blocks vs invalidated blocks.
but even though will there be a gain for that particular validator who mined the block?
There maybe be some MEV opportunities by doing this. but This often ?.
