Marathon Digital, a prominent player in the realm of Bitcoin mining, has acknowledged that it inadvertently mined an invalid Bitcoin block as part of an “experimental” endeavor aimed at refining the company’s operational strategies.
In a post dated September 27th, Marathon revealed that a minor fraction of the company’s hash rate is allocated to these experiments, emphatically clarifying that their intention was never to tamper with the integrity of the Bitcoin network.
Marathon underscored, “This experiment in no way aimed to modify Bitcoin Core in any manner,” emphasizing their swift rectification of the error as soon as the invalid block was detected.
Crucially, it’s important to note that the bug responsible for this occurrence originated within the firm’s internal development environment and had no association with Marathon’s Bitcoin production pool or Bitcoin Core—the primary software interface for connecting to the Bitcoin network and running a node.
The incident transpired on September 26th, precisely at 9:42 pm UTC, affecting block 809,478, as reported by Mempool.space.
Several Bitcoin developers, in conjunction with BitMEX Research, attributed the invalid block to a “transaction ordering issue.” Bitcoin developer “mononaut” opined that Marathon’s mistake stemmed from the reordering of transactions based on ascending absolute fees.
Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair recommended that Marathon should have conducted this experiment on a testnet before venturing into Bitcoin’s mainnet.
In retrospection, Marathon remarked that Bitcoin “operated precisely as intended” by excluding the invalid block. They stressed, “This incident, though unintended, underscores the robust security of the Bitcoin network, which promptly rejected and rectified the anomaly.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Marathon for comment but had not received an immediate response as of the time of reporting.
On September 27th, during the opening hours, Marathon’s (MARA) stock price experienced a 2.91% dip, settling at $8.01, according to data from Google Finance.
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