Blockchain split of 4 July 2015

[pereira4]

Why is this taking so long to resolve?

Surely it is in the mining pools interest to fall into line? Or is there something more sinister going on?

Re stress testing I suppose it needs to be done isnt bitcoin still classed as beta or am I missing the point?

It actually was resolved pretty fast. (6 blocks ~ 1h)

I guess the news at the top of the forum, is just a reminder that you should update your client.
Theoretically this could happen again(I highlty doubt it, since pools/miners already lost money) and the only prevention is to use a up-to-date client(or connect to an up-to-date node)

It is clearly not resolved. Look at the forum header and you will see. Things are not "back to normal" if you have to wait for ~30 confirmation on many clients. This is ongoing as of now until the above warning is removed.

Sorry, for the misinformation. Seems like there was another split according to: https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2015-07-04-spv-mining
So, miners are stupid enough to still lose money. Sorry, I assumed, they were smarter.

So this happened twice now in a row? Oo

When what is said is correct in this thread then couldnt that be used to attack bitcoin and lower the price of bitcoin? I mean presenting wrong hashes to these pools and letting them create a fork? I guess there is some failsaife built in as to which pools they watch but most probably they watch small ones too and someone could decide that he could earn some coins by shorting them with leverage and then starting the next fork?

Further proof that we aren't ready for mass adoption. Glad I always stuck with Core, but feel really bad for anyone affected by this. 30 confirmations is a ton of time. I hope no one lost money somehow with this if you can lose money in this situation (some transaction getting stuck or something, or being precessed into the other blockchain). This sounds pretty messy to me.

[SebastianJu]

Why is this taking so long to resolve?

Surely it is in the mining pools interest to fall into line? Or is there something more sinister going on?

Re stress testing I suppose it needs to be done isnt bitcoin still classed as beta or am I missing the point?

It actually was resolved pretty fast. (6 blocks ~ 1h)

I guess the news at the top of the forum, is just a reminder that you should update your client.
Theoretically this could happen again(I highlty doubt it, since pools/miners already lost money) and the only prevention is to use a up-to-date client(or connect to an up-to-date node)

It is clearly not resolved. Look at the forum header and you will see. Things are not "back to normal" if you have to wait for ~30 confirmation on many clients. This is ongoing as of now until the above warning is removed.

Sorry, for the misinformation. Seems like there was another split according to: https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2015-07-04-spv-mining
So, miners are stupid enough to still lose money. Sorry, I assumed, they were smarter.

So this happened twice now in a row? Oo

When what is said is correct in this thread then couldnt that be used to attack bitcoin and lower the price of bitcoin? I mean presenting wrong hashes to these pools and letting them create a fork? I guess there is some failsaife built in as to which pools they watch but most probably they watch small ones too and someone could decide that he could earn some coins by shorting them with leverage and then starting the next fork?

Further proof that we aren't ready for mass adoption. Glad I always stuck with Core, but feel really bad for anyone affected by this. 30 confirmations is a ton of time. I hope no one lost money somehow with this if you can lose money in this situation (some transaction getting stuck or something, or being precessed into the other blockchain). This sounds pretty messy to me.

Still. Im impressed that happened 2 times in a couple days. And the first time on the worldwide known independence day in america? Im not into conspiracy theories but the randomness is interesting at least. Nothing for years and then, at this day. Oo

[JorgeStolfi]

Why is this taking so long to resolve?

It actually was resolved pretty fast. (6 blocks ~ 1h)

There was a second incident on July 5th, with a 3-block orphan branch.  There are still v2 miners out there, and the v3 miners are still accepting recent block hashes from them, and mining new blocks on top of them before they have time to validate (or even see) those parent.  The fork was blotched.

[luthermarcus]

Why is this taking so long to resolve?

It actually was resolved pretty fast. (6 blocks ~ 1h)

There was a second incident on July 5th, with a 3-block orphan branch.  There are still v2 miners out there, and the v3 miners are still accepting recent block hashes from them, and mining new blocks on top of them before they have time to validate (or even see) those parent.  The fork was blotched.

Could you explain this further, I thought bitcoin 10 or above would block v2 blocks from being accepted. So what your saying those blocks are still finding a way on this side of the forked blockchain. Like f2pool i know they fucked up and did something like that but i thought it was isolated event which was fixed. Would this bog bitcoin core down it's been stalling a lot from what miners are saying.  I think bitcoin core should be more efficient at blocking those left behind without the extra resources (cpu and ram) to effectively block them.

Please criticize my recollection of what is happening that's the only way i will learn about this in more depth.

[hokus_pokus]

Happy backlog day! 

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21125/bitcoin-network-still-backlogged-tens-thousands-unconfirmed-transactions-causing-delays/

[notbatman]

I made a couple of transactions yesterday, they both confirmed in about 5 min. I'd say make sure you include a healthy transaction fee.

As far as mining goes I had some issues between June 16th and 28th but no problems after that (upgraded p2pool to v14). I didn't even know there was an issue on the 4th until I read the posts here.

[J.Socal]

using .10.2 btc core.Been 4hrs and not 1 confirmation yet..Normally takes 10min max for a confirmation.

[newIndia]

using .10.2 btc core.Been 4hrs and not 1 confirmation yet..Normally takes 10min max for a confirmation.

It is not about what version you are using. It is about how much mining fee you are offering against what size of the Tx. If you could share the Tx ID, we can see more details into it.

[luthermarcus]

using .10.2 btc core.Been 4hrs and not 1 confirmation yet..Normally takes 10min max for a confirmation.

It is not about what version you are using. It is about how much mining fee you are offering against what size of the Tx. If you could share the Tx ID, we can see more details into it.

The whole system is going through a stress test so it's bogged down but sure offering higher fee will git it priority
wow exchanges with there high traffic are definitely feeling the impact.

[JorgeStolfi]

Why is this taking so long to resolve?

It actually was resolved pretty fast. (6 blocks ~ 1h)

There was a second incident on July 5th, with a 3-block orphan branch.  There are still v2 miners out there, and the v3 miners are still accepting recent block hashes from them, and mining new blocks on top of them before they have time to validate (or even see) those parent.  The fork was blotched.

Could you explain this further

I am not an expert, I am just learning from what is posted on forums, too.  But basically mining pools have a way to "steal" the hash of newly mined blocks from each other, even before those blocks get out to the relay nodes. They must immediately start to mine a new block Y with the stolen block X as the parent,  without waiting for X to propagate out to the relay nodes, otherwise the pool that mined X will have many seconds of head start.  If they are lucky, they will solve block Y even before the block X has finished propagating to the nodes and the nodes have validated it.

Those miners do validate the transactions that they put into block Y (in parallel with mining it), but they cannot start validating block X, or even check whether it was mined by a v3 miner, because they only have the hash of block X, nothing else.  Apparently they used to fetch and check block X, also in parallel with mining, once it became available; but F2Pool had stopped doing so,  because (they said) it had cost them a block reward once (perhaps by using up some of their internet bandwidth).

Usually this shortcut works, because the block X was verified by its miner, and is valid 99.99% of the time.  Hoever, just after the BIP66 rule became active, the miner BTCNuggets, that was still running v2 software, happened to mine the next block X. The BTC-China pool stole its hash from BTCNuggets, and F2Pool stole it from BTC-China.  F2Pool (who had upgraded to v3) mined a new block Y on top of X, without realizing that X was invalid because it was mined with v2 rules.  Then F2Pool mined another block Z on top of it, and AntPool mined another one on top of Z, and so on -- all without realizing that X was invalid.

[luthermarcus]

Why is this taking so long to resolve?

It actually was resolved pretty fast. (6 blocks ~ 1h)

There was a second incident on July 5th, with a 3-block orphan branch.  There are still v2 miners out there, and the v3 miners are still accepting recent block hashes from them, and mining new blocks on top of them before they have time to validate (or even see) those parent.  The fork was blotched.

Could you explain this further

I am not an expert, I am just learning from what is posted on forums, too.  But basically mining pools have a way to "steal" the hash of newly mined blocks from each other, even before those blocks get out to the relay nodes. They must immediately start to mine a new block Y with the stolen block X as the parent,  without waiting for X to propagate out to the relay nodes, otherwise the pool that mined X will have many seconds of head start.  If they are lucky, they will solve block Y even before the block X has finished propagating to the nodes and the nodes have validated it.

Those miners do validate the transactions that they put into block Y (in parallel with mining it), but they cannot start validating block X, or even check whether it was mined by a v3 miner, because they only have the hash of block X, nothing else.  Apparently they used to fetch and check block X, also in parallel with mining, once it became available; but F2Pool had stopped doing so,  because (they said) it had cost them a block reward once (perhaps by using up some of their internet bandwidth).

Usually this shortcut works, because the block X was verified by its miner, and is valid 99.99% of the time.  Hoever, just after the BIP66 rule became active, the miner BTCNuggets, that was still running v2 software, happened to mine the next block X. The BTC-China pool stole its hash from BTCNuggets, and F2Pool stole it from BTC-China.  F2Pool (who had upgraded to v3) mined a new block Y on top of X, without realizing that X was invalid because it was mined with v2 rules.  Then F2Pool mined another block Z on top of it, and AntPool mined another one on top of Z, and so on -- all without realizing that X was invalid.

I pretty much understand that instead of using bitcoin core they used an alternative SPV nodes which doesnt check the whole block chain, were not denying v2 blocks invalid when BIPP66 protocol went into effect but is faster to run to give them an edge. Doing so they were mining v2 and v3 blocks and accepting both because it took a while for them to get denied by the network. They should have know that they were going to loss the v2 blocks so it could have been greed even thought it meant bogging down the whole network. Even thought it was counter productive becuase v2 blocks were worthless. The current issues people are having are with the stress test and some transactions that are still kicking around from people who haven't upgraded there nodes or pools that haven't upgraded. All together it's having a bogged down effect felt with transactions being slow as well as miners processing worthless transactions from the test and maybe from invalid v2 blocks kicking around.The problem will resolve itself it just will take time to clear up all the junk and while miners and pool and node owners update. It's really not that big of a problem just it was last minute which they should have warned miners and pool owners in advance because they took profit hits. Big pools like f2pool and ant-pool are at fault themselves because they should be aware of stuff like this because the centralize and made a business out of it unlike small miners who have a full time job and do it as a hobby.


http://www.p2pool.org/
P2pool and forestv were on top of things for there community releasing updates ahead of time and not getting paid to do so if he could do that there is no excuse for big time pools. Support decentralized and get paid more no fees and no one taking a cut of your hashpower.
But you have to make sure you stay up to date with your node.

Easiest way to get started on windows and linux
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.0

[J.Socal]

7 hrs still on 0..I made about the same amount transaction yesterday and got a confirmation in 10-15 mins.So I doubt its the fee..

[goku90504]

One way to think of this is that a group of Chinese miners just gave over $50K away to other miners, to reward those other miners for checking the block versions before building new blocks.

Terribly nice of them, really.  Though I'm sure they'd prefer to've collected the prize themselves, it's nice of them to "support" those who are doing a better job than they are.

So, for a few hours, if you were mining and actually checking blocks for validity, you were getting about double your usual rate of return.

"SPV mining" is one of those silly ideas like "virtual memory" or "virtual sex" - the real thing is always better.

that's not what happened the 50k he Chinese miners made wasn't given to anyone else they were unmade while the other miners got exactly their normal prize with less competition because the Chinese were mining invalid blocks 

[J.Socal]

Good news,  finally got confirmation..Hopefully gets back to normal soon.

[cesmak]

I have a stuck transaction too from my bitcoin core 10.2 wallet by more than 13 hours....

I've used the sugested bitcoin core fees, but no confirmations....

https://blockchain.info/tx/718f24fcc03cd5ccaed7f316e40101c53fcc6609775864b1b624df69d9f4b96e?show_adv=true

Someone expert can help me ?

[BIT-Sharon]

Does it mean that the safety of Bitcoin chain is not good again?

[Mayer Amschel]

Fuck this Blockchain man, i choose Blocktrail over this crap.

 

[orryde]

My wallet https://blockchain.info/address/15B9e7LeCTdKhRdjtTroi12DmamYgYWino still get "Unconfirmed Transaction" a few hours ago there is any problem with Blockhain?

[Jeremycoin]

My wallet https://blockchain.info/address/15B9e7LeCTdKhRdjtTroi12DmamYgYWino still get "Unconfirmed Transaction" a few hours ago there is any problem with Blockhain?

It also happens to some people, so I think there is a problem with te Blockchain.
But I hope it'll be fixed ASAP

[Borisz]

My wallet https://blockchain.info/address/15B9e7LeCTdKhRdjtTroi12DmamYgYWino still get "Unconfirmed Transaction" a few hours ago there is any problem with Blockhain?

It also happens to some people, so I think there is a problem with te Blockchain.
But I hope it'll be fixed ASAP

I have a stuck transaction too from my bitcoin core 10.2 wallet by more than 13 hours....

I've used the sugested bitcoin core fees, but no confirmations....

https://blockchain.info/tx/718f24fcc03cd5ccaed7f316e40101c53fcc6609775864b1b624df69d9f4b96e?show_adv=true

Someone expert can help me ?

Could both of these issues have something to do with the unusually large number of transactions per blocks in the last few days?
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block