What if The Bitcoin Blockchain Stalls And Stops Producing Blocks?

[OddJobsForBitcoin]

There's a story making the rounds on Wu Blockchain that Bitcoin block production stopped for 2 hours on Sunday. Here's the Mempool link associated with the story: https://mempool.space/zh/block/000000000000000000004687d79404b31eabff38e8806401e9ac6ad0781d3c20
I've been trying to understand the data on that page but it's not making sense to me since it's half-Chinese. Can someone verify from the data that Bitcoin network didn't produce blocks for 2 hours. It get's even more interesting. What would happen if the blockchain stalls for a whole day or two, or even a week?

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[Bitcoin_Arena]

Here is the English version of the link - https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000004687d79404b31eabff38e8806401e9ac6ad0781d3c20

Finding a block after 2 hours sometimes happens just like it does with in 1 second of the previous block. So, It should create any fear since the whole process of finding the next block is something random and based on luck too. What could be the reason for it to stall for a week? Total internet shutdown in the entire world? All miners laying down their tools?

Anyway, for that to happen, there must have been something serious that could have occurred because the incentive to mine a bitcoin block is still big and miners are also trying and competing to solve the next block.

Also, after every 2016 blocks which is approximately 2 weeks, there is difficulty adjustment. If miners find it so hard to solve the next blocks in an average of 10 minutes per block, the next difficulty adjustment ensures that average block time get back with in the range at least for the next 2016 blocks.

[hatshepsut93]

What would happen if the blockchain stalls for a whole day or two, or even a week?

This could happen if a lot of hashpower suddenly leaves the network, like a surprise ban on mining by a few major governments. If this is timed right after the difficulty adjustment and there's still more than thousand blocks to the next adjustment, this could mean a long period of very slow blocks, which would drive the fees insanely high up, especially since people will be panic selling and rushing to send coins to exchanges. But I believe Bitcoin will survive and adapt in the long run, even if such attacks would undermine the confidence of many holders.

[franky1]

bitcoin is not programmed to produce blocks every 10 minutes static/set rule

bitcoin is programmed that it tries dynamically  to stay in range of 2016 blocks a fortnight
this might mean some blocks are solved in 2 minutes whilst others are solved in a couple hours

the reason blocks are not fixed is because hashing a ID is about trying multiple attempts of finding a difficult pattern in a random sequence , which causes there to be different time variance per block

the 2016 per fortnight does not mean guaranteed blocks per 10 minutes.. its just math that if you divided the actual rule of random times of blocks in a fortnight by 2016 it just AVERAGES to 10minutes,

[thecodebear]

OP, the blockchain did not stall. It's working exactly as it should, as it always does. It just so happened that block had an unusually long time to mine. Sure it's rare, but that doesn't mean anything went wrong. Bitcoin always works the way its supposed to, that's the beauty of decentralization.

[Marvelman]

Can someone verify from the data that Bitcoin network didn't produce blocks for 2 hours. It get's even more interesting. What would happen if the blockchain stalls for a whole day or two, or even a week?

A 2-hour block is not unheard of, it has happened before. According to u.today, 2021 also recorded one of the longest times between two blocks in almost 10 years. It took 122 minutes to mine block 679,786.
Read more on U.Today https://u.today/bitcoin-just-recorded-longest-time-between-two-blocks-in-almost-10-years

If I'm not mistaken, even a 1-day block is theoretically possible, although highly unlikely.

Here are some more interesting facts:

Based on block timestamps (which do not have to be accurate), the longest difference between successive blocks is 463160 seconds (5 days, 8 hours, 39 minutes, 20 seconds) between blocks 0 and 1. The second longest is 90532 seconds (1 day 1 hour 8 minutes 52 seconds) between blocks 15323 and 15324.

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/77783/shortest-and-longest-block-interval-time-ever-recorded-in-bitcoin

[BitMaxz]

What would happen if the blockchain stalls for a whole day or two, or even a week?

If this happens today or soon and it doesn't produce any blocks there are lots of transactions that will stuck on the mempool because the blockchain stops producing blocks.
Also, miners won't get any block rewards since no blocks are being produced within a day, two, or a week.

If the whole world stopped mining this would happen if no one mines it wouldn't produce any blocks but it's impossible to happen nowadays because in some countries crypto is legal and developing like in Japan.

About the link you provided above just remove the zh/ from the URL it would switch to the English version. and the 2 hours gap you see in the mempool is normal but I don't see any block produce more than 2 hours.

[hd49728]

It shows how Difficulty Retarget is helpful for Bitcoin blockchain.

Network hash rate can increase or decrease by miners who can install and turn on their mining rigs or suddenly shut down their mining rigs. Increasing network hash rate will cause an increase of network difficulty but decrease of network hash rate will need to wait for Difficulty Retarget that only happens after 2016 blocks (about 2 weeks).

Before a Difficulty Retarget to reduce difficulty, time needs for finding new blocks will be longer than average block time, if network hashrate drops too much and causes a significant smaller computational power.

[yhiaali3]

It get's even more interesting. What would happen if the blockchain stalls for a whole day or two, or even a week?

I expect that nothing important will happen. Of course, transactions and the like will stop, but it will not affect the data in the Blockchain because it is stored in many decentralized nodes. Therefore, when the problem ends, everything will return to normal starting from the point where it stopped.

[adaseb]

Yeah this is not unheard of. I remember once long time ago when I was doing a p2P meet, we did the transaction and it took 1 hour to confirm. We just kept talking about bitcoin and blockchain.

However you need to understand 10 minutes is just the average and it can have variance. Sometimes there is a block found and a few seconds later another block is found, usually that one is empty. That’s just how the network operates and it’s completely normal.

[jrrsparkles]

You can often witness no blocks mined for 1 hour but yesterday it was about 2 hour that is rare it doesn't mean it is due to any issues in the network. Already users explained that finding the blocks are so random and the time we use to say 10 minutes per block is an approx average.

It never occurred before that no blocks were found for a day which shows what is the probability of such an instance and even if that happens the network clogs up and people will try to keep increasing their fee to get into the front of the queue but once it starts then everything will be back to normal.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin mining is a Poisson process. See this previous post of mine:

As I stated above, bitcoin mining is a Poisson process. You can read about this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_point_process

You can model the distribution using the equation (as given on the linked page above):

P{N = n} = Λⁿ * e^-Λ / n!

If you take n to equal 0 (i.e. you won't find a block), and take lambda (Λ) to equal the number of blocks you would expect to find in a given time frame, then you can simplify that equation to

P = Λ⁰ * e^-Λ / 0!
P = 1 * e^-Λ / 1
P = e^-Λ

Therefore, the probability of not finding a block when you would expect to find Λ blocks is equal to e^-Λ. For example, the probability of not finding a block in 10 minutes, when you would ordinarily expect to find 1 block in 10 minutes, is e^-1 = 36.8%

Given the equation P = e^-Λ, then we can take the inverse to find the probability of finding a block: 1-P = 1-e^-Λ. So the probability of finding a block in 10 minutes is 1-e^-1 = 63.2%.

So, as I said above, the probability of finding a block in 2 minutes is therefore 1-e^-0.2 = 18.1%.

Given that in two hours you would expect to find 12 blocks, then the chance of not finding any blocks in two hours is 0.000614%. This works out to a chance of 1 in ~162,755. Given that we get ~52,560 blocks per year, then we would expect a delay of at least 2 hours to happen roughly once every 3 years, on average.

In short, bitcoin is functioning as normal.

[Mpamaegbu]

This could happen if a lot of hashpower suddenly leaves the network, like a surprise ban on mining by a few major governments. If this is timed right after the difficulty adjustment and there's still more than thousand blocks to the next adjustment, this could mean a long period of very slow blocks, which would drive the fees insanely high up...

This is what we're faced with right now and it's indeed driving many of us crazy, not just fees. Whatever that's truly sending transaction fees up there has overdone it and it's about time it corrected itself. There are a few here who haven't tasted what it's to execute a transaction with less than $0.10 fee. To them, fees are always this high. I miss those glorious days of Bitcoin transactions. It isn't even as if it's something that happened a long time ago. I'm talking about just a few months ago, perhaps three/four months ago.

To OP's question, if that which they described  ever happens there will be pandemonium in the entire crypto space. Panic sales will be the order of the day and that can further wreck Bitcoin.

[Troytech]

Bitcoin mining is a Poisson process. See this previous post of mine:

As I stated above, bitcoin mining is a Poisson process. You can read about this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_point_process

You can model the distribution using the equation (as given on the linked page above):

P{N = n} = Λⁿ * e^-Λ / n!

If you take n to equal 0 (i.e. you won't find a block), and take lambda (Λ) to equal the number of blocks you would expect to find in a given time frame, then you can simplify that equation to

P = Λ⁰ * e^-Λ / 0!
P = 1 * e^-Λ / 1
P = e^-Λ

Therefore, the probability of not finding a block when you would expect to find Λ blocks is equal to e^-Λ. For example, the probability of not finding a block in 10 minutes, when you would ordinarily expect to find 1 block in 10 minutes, is e^-1 = 36.8%

Given the equation P = e^-Λ, then we can take the inverse to find the probability of finding a block: 1-P = 1-e^-Λ. So the probability of finding a block in 10 minutes is 1-e^-1 = 63.2%.

So, as I said above, the probability of finding a block in 2 minutes is therefore 1-e^-0.2 = 18.1%.

Given that in two hours you would expect to find 12 blocks, then the chance of not finding any blocks in two hours is 0.000614%. This works out to a chance of 1 in ~162,755. Given that we get ~52,560 blocks per year, then we would expect a delay of at least 2 hours to happen roughly once every 3 years, on average.

In short, bitcoin is functioning as normal.

Im really numb about this post and I think it's a very nice comment, I'm not well feed in the area of mathematics but I'm wondering how did you come up with the original equation, from the whitepaper or was it self generated, just very curious and if possible I woudl have loved to know more about mining and how it works, maybe more technical stuff, I'm hungry to know deep things about it, maybe a link to older post about mining that woudl educate me about it