So, I bet most of you know that Block #840000 is pretty significant. It's the first block right after the 4th Bitcoin halving, and now the block reward has dropped to 3.125 BTC. A bunch of people even paid extra fees just to get their transactions into this block. Tons of folks sent messages via OP_RETURN to make their mark in Bitcoin's history. The miner, ViaBTC, raked in a jaw-dropping 37.626 BTC in fees for this block. Did any of you manage to send a message for this block? Or did you come across any cool messages that caught your eye? What were they?
Mining pools were competing to broadcast the block first, and with the fees being worth much more than 3.125 BTC, the mining pool would not have time to broadcast a private message. It is not an important event as much as the profit that can be made.
about OP_RETURN, You can find the data here https://ordiscan.com/block/840000
Not seem obvious but OP is talking about normal transactions with OP_RETURN output with very-high fee broadcasted after block height 839999 in order to be included to the next "halving" block height 840000.
Perhaps it's @100bitcoin's phrase: "Have you been able to send a message in this block?" that's confusing everyone.
It really isn't though. It's just a block like the other hundreds of thousands of bitcoin blocks
It is worth clarifying here that the fees weren't this outrageously high just because people were trying to get into block #840000. The main reason for it is an ongoing spam attack that started a couple of weeks ago and has been artificially inflating the fees.
Here is the visualization of mempool from the past 2 weeks. The mouse is on top of the approximate place where block #840000 was mined. You can see how the spam started a long time ago and has only grown ever since. There is only a small spike at #840000 as the underlying spam attack continues