Rare Bitcoin Chain Fork Leads To Double-Spending Of 13 Transactions

Key Points:

• A chain fork occurred on the Bitcoin network at block height 788686, resulting in two competing versions of the blockchain and a double-spending of 13 transactions involving nearly 10 BTC.
• BitMEX Research noted that chain splits of length 2 on Bitcoin are rare, but the recent increase in stale blocks may have made this occurrence somewhat expected.
• The exact cause of the fork is not entirely clear, but it is likely due to network latency or variance in the rate of block discovery.

A chain fork occurred at block height 788686 of the Bitcoin network, resulting in two competing versions of the blockchain. 13 transactions involving nearly 10 BTC were double-spent in the longest chain. BitMEX Research notes that chain splits of length 2 on Bitcoin are rare.

On May 8th, 2023, a chain fork of length 2 occurred at block height 788686 of the Bitcoin network. This event has caught the attention of the cryptocurrency community as chain forks of this magnitude are quite rare. According to ForkMonitor, 13 transactions involving nearly 10 BTC have been double-spent in the longest chain.

“1 transaction(s) involving 0.00336058 BTC have been fee bumped on the longest chain. Presence of an RBF flag is not considered here. For each output, we check if was changed by less than 0.0001 BTC.”

ForkMonitor wrote

Chain forks happen when two miners simultaneously find a valid block at the same height. This results in two competing versions of the blockchain, with some nodes accepting one version and others accepting the other. In this case, the fork occurred at block height 788686, meaning that both versions of the blockchain were valid until that point.

The exact cause of the fork is not entirely clear, but it is likely due to network latency or variance in the rate of block discovery. Given the recent increase in stale blocks, it may have been expected that a fork would occur at some point. Stale blocks happen when a valid block is discovered but not broadcasted to the network in time, resulting in two valid blocks at the same height.

BitMEX Research has noted that chain splits of length 2 on Bitcoin are quite rare, with the last one occurring in November 2020. However, given the recent increase in stale blocks, perhaps this occurrence was not entirely unexpected.

DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

Join us to keep track of news: https://linktr.ee/coincu

Thana

Coincu News