Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Bitcoin Snafu Causes Miners To Generate Invalid Blocks

Posted by Soulskill on from the when-your-money-is-not-actually-money dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A notice at bitcoin.org warns users of the cryptocurrency that many miners are currently generating invalid blocks. The cause seems to be out-of-date software, and software that assumed blocks were valid instead of checking them. They explain further "For several months, an increasing amount of mining hash rate has been signaling its intent to begin enforcing BIP66 strict DER signatures. As part of the BIP66 rules, once 950 of the last 1,000 blocks were version 3 (v3) blocks, all upgraded miners would reject version 2 (v2) blocks. Early morning UTC on 4 July 2015, the 950/1000 (95%) threshold was reached. Shortly thereafter, a small miner (part of the non-upgraded 5%) mined an invalid block--as was an expected occurrence. Unfortunately, it turned out that roughly half the network hash rate was mining without fully validating blocks (called SPV mining), and built new blocks on top of that invalid block. Note that the roughly 50% of the network that was SPV mining had explicitly indicated that they would enforce the BIP66 rules. By not doing so, several large miners have lost over $50,000 dollars worth of mining income so far."

3 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. How much electricity was used last month to mine? by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The irony is that just a few stories down, there is a lot of talk about why more people don't drive EVs and how important it is for the world to get off fossil fuels.

    So... how much power generated by fossil fuels was consumed "mining" bitcoins last month?

    I can't think of anything less "green" than a computer pulling hundreds of watts sitting around 24/7 chewing on random numbers.

  2. Re:Happy 4th of July! by msobkow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ah, screw that. It doesn't matter if you're free or not. If you've got oil or minerals, we're going to bomb the shit out of you...

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  3. Re:How much electricity was used last month to min by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My power comes from coal and natural gas and costs less than 11 cents per kWh.

    Are you suggesting that is too expensive to mine with?

    Yes. That is about twice the price of wholesale hydropower.

    Are you suggesting that no one outside of those areas are mining Bitcoin?

    There are a few small miners outside these areas, but the big ASIC miners are located in areas where cheap hydropower is available.