Getrawtransaction does not work for genesis block coinbase transaction #3303

While testing a few things on testnet, I called

getrawtransaction("4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b", 1)

(coinbase for block 0 on testnet3) and got a response of

{'message': 'No information available about transaction', 'code': -5}

Calling

getrawtransaction("f0315ffc38709d70ad5647e22048358dd3745f3ce3874223c80a7c92fab0c8ba", 1)

(coinbase for block 1 on testnet4) gives a response of

{'blockhash': '00000000b873e79784647a6c82962c70d228557d24a747ea4d1b8bbe878e1206', 'vout': [{'scriptPubKey': {'reqSigs': 1, 'hex': '21021aeaf2f8638a129a3156fbe7e5ef635226b0bafd495ff03afe2c843d7e3a4b51ac', 'addresses': ['n3GNqMveyvaPvUbH469vDRadqpJMPc84JA'], 'asm': '021aeaf2f8638a129a3156fbe7e5ef635226b0bafd495ff03afe2c843d7e3a4b51 OP_CHECKSIG', 'type': 'pubkey'}, 'value': 50.0, 'n': 0}], 'hex': '01000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ffffffff0e0420e7494d017f062f503253482fffffffff0100f2052a010000002321021aeaf2f8638a129a3156fbe7e5ef635226b0bafd495ff03afe2c843d7e3a4b51ac00000000', 'vin': [{'coinbase': '0420e7494d017f062f503253482f', 'sequence': 4294967295L}], 'txid': 'f0315ffc38709d70ad5647e22048358dd3745f3ce3874223c80a7c92fab0c8ba', 'blocktime': 1296688928, 'version': 1, 'confirmations': 147738, 'time': 1296688928, 'locktime': 0}

Which indicates that getrawtransaction has problems returning genesis block coinbase information. My bitcoind has been set up with -txindex=1 -reindex=1, so it should know all of the transactions.

Works as designed: The genesis block coinbase transaction effectively doesn't exist, as it was never indexed in the original software. Making it spendable would be a hard-forking change, returning it with txindex=1 would suggest the coin supply was 50 BTC higher than it actually is since it hasn't been spent.

Well, I am mainly going at it for the sake of completeness. I'm currently writing a block explorer application, I can access data about every transaction but this one. I could work around it if there was some "getrawblock" function I could call, but that is also missing, so I have to piece together blocks from raw transactions.

getblock(<hash>, 0)

But really, this "transaction" doesn't exist.

IMO, the bug is really that "4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b" is listed in getblock at all. We should just consider "4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b" as a "no-transactions-at-all merkle root"

I think getblock accepts only 1 parameter. I tried calling getblock(null, 0) or getblock("000000000933ea01ad0ee984209779baaec3ced90fa3f408719526f8d77f4943", 0) and I get {'message': 'getblock <hash>\nReturns details of a block with given block-hash.', 'code': -1} .

The second parameter was added after 0.8.

You mean in the latest version that is not yet a standard download? I'm running 0.8.5-beta.

At any rate, thanks for the info, I will see what the newest update brings, it might make my problem obsolete.

@luke-jr @ThePiachu i also want to get all detail about a block, such as all the transactions included. but getblock is different between 0.7 and 0.8, so i use getrawtransaction, unfortunately, it does't work.

I think we should have a special-case error message just for the genesis block coinbase transaction; maybe:

{'message': 'Genesis block coinbase transaction is not indexed-- yes, that is weird. No, we are not going to change that.', 'code': -5}

@gavinandresen If we're going to special-case the genesis block in that RPC, we can just as well return the (known) value :p

.........do not try, 50 btc per block ,,,,,,to reach 21mill!,,,,which block?

It’s not indexed and thus not included in the coin supply. Even satoshi can’t spend it On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 7:00 PM ZKVCRYPTO0022 notifications@github.com wrote:

.........do not try, 50 btc per block ,,,,,,to reach 21mill!,,,,which block?

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3303#issuecomment-465956607, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABR_7uGyh3_GemEhiE-G2dMLPyUolQGqks5vPnw1gaJpZM4BPRKY .

Correct, and it will stay like that

Dana četvrtak, 21. veljače 2019. h4x3rotab notifications@github.com piše:

It’s not indexed and thus not included in the coin supply. Even satoshi can’t spend it On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 7:00 PM ZKVCRYPTO0022 notifications@github.com wrote:

.........do not try, 50 btc per block ,,,,,,to reach 21mill!,,,,which block?

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3303#issuecomment-465956607, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABR_7uGyh3_GemEhiE- G2dMLPyUolQGqks5vPnw1gaJpZM4BPRKY> .

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