- Event detected at 788686
- No sign of “double spending”
- It’s just an interesting and fairly rare occurrence
BitMEX Research reported that a blockchain split in the Bitcoin network occurred at 788686 yesterday, May 7. This is a very rare event. The last time this happened was in November 2020.
The corresponding tweet BitMEX Research published overnight, citing ForkMonitor metrics.
It happens for two reasons – two miners simultaneously confirmed the block or the network underwent a hardfork and not everyone had time to complete the update.
In this particular case, it seems to be the first option. Two miners claimed the block – AntPool and Foundry USA.. There are 13 transactions totaling 9.85 BTC in the chain.
What is this and when was the last time something like this happened?
Chain splitting occurs when two miners process a block in parallel. The reason for this is, for example, a large number of obsolete blocks.
Author of Mastering Bitcoin Andreas Antonopoulos notes that such an event, though rare, is not some kind of anomaly:
“There is nothing strange about this. Think of it as protocol specific.”
The last time a 2-block chain split was recorded in November 2020. Then this event occurred at an altitude of 656477.
This is not particularly dangerous for the network, but could be evidence of a hacker attack if the separation was intentional. It’s about vulnerability of “double spending”.
We should remind, yesterday evening, May 8, the average commission for BTC-transaction reached $19. The reason for this was the surge in demand for BRC-20 tokens.