Bitcoin's blockchain briefly split into two competing versions on Sept. 11 after SpiderPool and AntPool each produced a valid block at height 966,500. Galaxy Research says it is the third one-block reorganization in less than a month. The network's proof-of-work rules resolved the split automatically, with no consensus bug or attack involved.
Bitcoin experienced its third one-block reorganization in less than a month on Sept. 11, after two mining pools mined competing blocks at the same height. SpiderPool and AntPool each produced a valid block at height 966,500, briefly creating two versions of the chain.
What happened at block 966,500
Galaxy Research's node first saw SpiderPool's block, which it treated as the tip of the chain. But AntPool had independently produced its own valid block at the same height, with a timestamp of 11:30:30 UTC and 4,359 transactions.
Bitcoin blocks do not reach every node on the network at the same instant, so different miners can end up briefly working from different versions of the latest block. That changed once AntPool produced the next block, 966,501, on top of its own version.
Because Bitcoin nodes follow the chain with the greatest accumulated proof-of-work, Galaxy's node then abandoned the SpiderPool block and switched to AntPool's branch. SpiderPool's block became stale, and its reward of roughly 3.1389 BTC became unusable. AntPool's winning block, by comparison, earned about 3.1411 BTC.
Third reorg in under a month
Galaxy Research says the previous two one-block reorganizations occurred at heights 962,722 on Aug. 16 and 963,853 on Aug. 24. Both were resolved the same way, with the network's consensus rules picking the chain with more accumulated work.
A one-block reorg of this kind does not indicate a network fault. It reflects the normal process by which mining pools occasionally produce competing blocks before the network converges on a single chain.
Source: U.Today
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