Altcoin News: In the Bitcoin Network, a Two-Hour Block Delay Occurred

October 1, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

Yesterday on Monday, a rather rare phenomenon was noticed in the Bitcoin blockchain — the interval between the release of two blocks was 119 minutes.

According to the portal Blockchain.com, block 597272 was released on 2019–09–30 15:08:45 time, and the next block 597273, is timestamped at 2019–09–30 17:07:42.

As a researcher of CoinMetrics Antoine Le Calvez noted, the probability of this event is only 0.000679%. The last time a similar delay between the release of two blocks was observed on May 2014.

According to the settings of the Bitcoin protocol, the target time for the release of one block is 10 minutes, however, it can vary both up and down depending on the speed of finding the right solution by the miners.

In itself, a single manifestation of such a delay is not a weighty argument for making assumptions about the health of the network, but because of its rarity, it deserves attention. Indeed, the next block 597274 was released about a minute after adding the delayed parent block.

The Bitcoin hash rate, which reflects the amount of computing power allocated by miners to search for a suitable hash value and add blocks to the blockchain, although it is an estimated value, continues to fluctuate between 80–100 EH / s, demonstrating a steady rise since the beginning of the year.

Events unfold amid the destruction of a large mining farm in China as a result of a fire. According to Twitter user Marshall Long, who has called himself a Bitcoin miner and cryptocurrency follower since 2010, the farm used Innosilicon equipment, which produced about 8–10 EH / s.

Author: Marko Vidrih