A Rare Event in Bitcoin History: Two Blocks Were Mined Simultaneously—What Does This Mean?

A rare “reorganization” (reorg) event occurred on the Bitcoin (BTC) network. This technical development, which took place around block height 941880, resulted in a brief chain fork due to different mining pools simultaneously producing blocks.

According to the details of the event, while AntPool and ViaBTC mined blocks numbered 941881 and 941882, Foundry USA mined two more blocks of the same height. This caused the temporary creation of two different chain branches on the network. However, due to Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism, the longer chain was considered valid, and the chain maintained by Foundry USA was preferred by the network. During this process, the two blocks mined by AntPool and ViaBTC became “stale” (invalid).

Following Reorg, Foundry USA was observed to have a significant advantage in block production. The pool’s successive mining of seven blocks is noteworthy, and this is largely attributed to chance and small differences in block spreading time.

According to experts, such short-term reorganizations are considered normal for the Bitcoin network. These rare events, occurring due to the high block propagation speed among miner pools, are seen as a natural consequence of Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work-based consensus mechanism rather than a threat to the system’s security.

*This is not investment advice.