Mining Mistakes: Marathon Digital Mines Invalid Block
Even the biggest miners and mining pools can make mistakes. This was evident when Marathon Digital mined an invalid block early Wednesday morning. An invalid block is one that the rest of the network rejects because it doesn’t align with the common protocol.
A block in Bitcoin consists of an average of 2,000 transactions. If the other nodes on the network detect an invalid transaction within the block, they can reject it using the consensus mechanism built into Bitcoin. Jameson Lopp, a bitcoin engineer and CTO of Casa, stated that Marathon mining an incorrect block doesn’t present a problem for the network but is more of a forfeited profit issue.
The issue with block 809478 was initially flagged by a user named “0xB10C,” but it was later pinpointed by BitMex Research that Marathon had misplaced two transactions within the block. This misordering caused the block to be rejected by other network participants.
Marathon confirmed the mistake on Wednesday afternoon through a post on X (formerly Twitter). The company attributes the error to an unforeseen bug that affected its development pool, not its main production pool. They explain that they use a small portion of their hash rate for experimentation and research purposes, which led to the bug.
Marathon emphasized that the incident was unintentional and not meant to alter the rules governing Bitcoin Core, the original and most widely adopted software client used to operate nodes on the Bitcoin network. They also highlighted that this incident underscores the robust security of the Bitcoin network, which rejected and rectified the anomaly.
Although this incident involved Marathon, it’s worth noting that similar mistakes have occurred with other mining pools. BitMex Research had flagged an invalid block seemingly mined by AntPool in July 2019. A similar occurrence was also noted in April 2023 involving f2pool.
Multiple blockchain explorers confirm that Foundry eventually mined block 809478 correctly.
Mistakes in mining can happen to any player in the industry, even the largest ones. However, the ability of the network to detect and reject invalid blocks showcases the robust security of the Bitcoin network. It’s a reminder that even with occasional errors, the fundamental integrity of Bitcoin remains intact.
