The unsolvable block

[Nexus9090]

This is just hypothetical.

Is there a scenario where a block could not be mined no matter how much hash rate was thrown at it?

Lets just say that when hashing that no share was found above 1, effectively rendering the network inert.

Even if then the network difficulty rolled back to 1 the block remained unsolvable within the bounds of nonce + extranonce + modified timestamp.

What happens in that scenario?

Is it even possible to occur?

#HashNotFound

[mikeywith]

Possible? yes, probable? no.

It's also 'possible' to solve a block using just a pen and paper, and that is still possible regardless of the difficulty, but that's certainly not probable.

The time between blocks follows exponential distribution, you can run cdf exponential distribution on any online tool to determine the chances of the next block taking x period.

Let's check the percentage of blocks found in some random periods.

1 hour = 0.0024%
2 hours =  0.00000614421
4 hours = 3.775×10 −9 %


That is an extremely low number and almost guaranteed never to happen provided the hashrate stays constant or goes higher, now in the extreme cases where the network loses a massive portion of its hashrate then things change, the longest it took to mine a block was about 5 days if am not mistaken.

But if you want to hypothetically assume no block was found for say a month, well, then there is nothing to solve it, we would need to fork the network, and mess with the consensus to overcome the issue, assuming anyone would want to use Bitcoin after something like that happens.

[MarketNeutral]

It always feels like an "unsolvable block" whenever I make a very important transaction and 10 minutes turns into 20 minutes, which turns into 40 minutes and the next block never seems to come.

But it always does.

A truly unsolvable block? Absurdly improbable. The devs would probably just fix it, fork it, and carry on.

The blockchain finds a way.

[Nexus9090]

I agree its an absurdly unlikely event, nevertheless it is feasible. In some respects however improbable it is likely inevitable. Murphy's law predicts, if anything can go wrong it will go wrong!

I guess the only way to fix it would be to nullify the block if thats even possible.

Like you say a fork would probably be the only fix.


I'm with you on the every block feels like an unsolvable block. The number of times I've sent some coin and its rolled on for a day before all the confirmations are in.

Cheers

G.