A mining mishap
Bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital recently made headlines after mining an invalid Bitcoin block during what they called an "experiment" to optimize their operations. The company clarified that the experiment was not an attempt to alter Bitcoin Core or the network in any way. Marathon quickly corrected the error once they discovered the invalid block.
A bug from an internal environment
Marathon explained that the bug responsible for the invalid block originated from their internal development environment. They made it clear that it was unrelated to their Bitcoin production pool or Bitcoin Core, the leading software for connecting to the Bitcoin network. The incident occurred on September 26 at 9:42 pm UTC on block 809478.
The cause of the issue
Bitcoin developers and BitMEX Research identified the invalid block as a "transaction ordering issue." It seems that Marathon made a mistake when rearranging the transactions in ascending order of absolute fees. This led to some transactions becoming invalid because they spent an output from a transaction included later in the block.
Lessons learned
Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair suggested that Marathon should have conducted this experiment on a testnet before attempting it on Bitcoin's mainnet. In retrospect, Marathon admitted that Bitcoin "functioned exactly as designed" by rejecting and rectifying the invalid block. This incident serves as a reminder of the robust security of the Bitcoin network.
Cointelegraph reached out to Marathon for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
A slight setback for Marathon
Following the incident, Marathon's share price (MARA) experienced a dip of 2.91% to $8.01 during opening hours on September 27, according to Google Finance.
