For the first time in five years, it took 2 hours for the Bitcoin network to dig a block for the first time.

According to a report by Bitcoinist on October 2, the Bitcoin network dug up a block with an unusually slow time, and it took a total of 119 minutes to dig out the block. Although the mining power of the Bitcoin network has reached a new high in the near future, this abnormal phenomenon has occurred.

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Bitcoin network has a very low probability of generating slow blocks

In the bitcoin network setting, the miner will dig up a new block every ten minutes. So far, the bitcoin network's block time has been kept for a predetermined period of time, only a small fluctuation. .

But the block with a block height of 597273 really makes the miners spend a lot of time and computing power.

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After the block was released from the previous block, the miner spent 119 minutes to dig out the block with a block height of 59723319.

This situation has only occurred 10 times in the history of Bitcoin. The last time this happened was in May 2014.

Assuming that the average block time of the bitcoin network is 10 minutes, the probability of generating the block is only 0.000679%.

-Antoine Le Calvez (@khannib) September 30, 2019 It is very rare to spend a long time dug out a block. As of October 1, the bitcoin network has a hash rate of 89 trillion times per second. This means that in 119 minutes, the miners consumed a lot of electricity and computing power before they dug it out.

The next block was dug in less than a minute. Since some miners attempt to mine using probabilistic optimization, the probability of occurrence of this block should be extremely low.

There are two explanations for the reasons for the block. The first is that the miners did not reach a consensus on the block. Another explanation is that the bitcoin blockchain may have split, but the fork monitor did not detect this happening.

Bitcoin lacks emergency difficulty adjustment mechanism

In fact, other networks have also experienced excessive block times, such as Bitcoin Cash. The main reason is that there are too few miners involved in mining, and the network has not adjusted the difficulty of mining. The bitcoin network will adjust the difficulty of mining every two weeks. At present, the mining difficulty of the network is at the highest level in history.

Just before the block of the block 59723319 was dug, the Bitcoin network suddenly lost 30% of the hash rate. In addition, the Bitcoin network has reduced more than 1,400 nodes in the past three months, indicating that the decentralization of the Bitcoin network has decreased, and the potential for potential security risks in the network has increased.

The Bitcoin network has repeatedly proved that it will not easily fall into the "death of death". However, the Bitcoin code does not have a more flexible way to deal with sudden changes in mining difficulty.

So far, the mining activity of Bitcoin has risen steadily and has not seen a sharp decline.

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