On September 27, miner Marathon Digital mined an invalid block at height #809,478 on the Bitcoin mainnet due to a transaction ordering issue.
It appears as if MARA had transactions in the wrong order.
The invalid block included this txn (A):https://t.co/IShJvlS8Ow
Spending an output from this txin (B):https://t.co/Z6BNJQqcYd
However, txin B was included in the block after txin A, therefore the block was invalid… https://t.co/rWC0mM8tyG
— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) September 27, 2023
As a result, the incorrect block was rejected by other network participants because they were trying to spend funds from an unprocessed transaction through it. Legitimate block #809,478 was mined by the Foundry USA pool.
Marathon representatives later confirmed the incident, calling it an “unforeseen” error.
We can confirm that Marathon did mine an invalid block. We utilize a small portion of our hash rate to experiment with our development pool and research potential methods to optimize our operations. The error was the result of an unanticipated bug that came from one of our…
— Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) (@MarathonDH) September 27, 2023
“This experiment was in no way an attempt to change Bitcoin Core in any way. Our team noticed the invalid block around the same time as the rest of the world, and we immediately fixed the error. This incident, although unintentional, highlights the strength of the security of the network, which rejected and resolved the anomaly,” Marathon added.
Casa CTO Jameson Lopp jokedthat Bitcoin is “an impregnable fortress of verification that prevents double spending.”
Let us remind you that on September 10, an unknown person paid 1,982,108,632 satoshi ($510,750) as a commission for transferring 0.074 BTC (~$1800). This is the largest payment in dollar terms for confirming a transaction.
It later turned out that the blockchain infrastructure company Paxos was behind the transfer. Representatives of F2Pool, after the necessary checks, returned 19.82 BTC to the company.
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