Bitcoin Association, a Switzerland-based nonprofit organization that supports the development of the Bitcoin SV blockchain, has announced that it will be pursuing criminal charges against a malicious miner.
It is also currently working with exchanges in order to freeze block rewards associated with the miner.
Bitcoin Association claims that empty blocks are being produced by a majority miner on the network.
The miner has been operating on the blockchain for years, but patterns of malicious activity started to emerge. The bad actor started mining empty blocks while also increasing the share of the hashrate.
Such nefarious behavior is negatively affecting honest miners and businesses that are part of the network.
The dishonest miner is refusing to collect new transactions that are being broadcast to a node. Instead, it prioritizes producing empty blocks.
The organization claims that the miner is deliberately attacking the network in order to disrupt its economic activity. It has repeatedly attempted to contact the miner, to no avail.
Schadenfreude
Many members of the Bitcoin community started ridiculing the Bitcoin Association following its announcement.
The announcement included the threat of criminal charges, which sounds toothless because the miner is anonymous and has not signed a contract with anyone.
Bob Summerwill, executive director at ETC Cooperation, claims that the organization's threats of criminal charges are actually toothless since the miner is anonymous. Moreover, they never signed a contract with anyone, which is why any legal action is unlikely to succeed.
Godfrey Benjamin
Arman Shirinyan
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin