Did anyone else notice this strange two-block reorg in the Bitcoin Mainnet? I couldn't find any chat about it on any international boards here. I stumbled upon it while checking out some data on fork.observer and the bitcoin-cli getchaintips from my node. Normally there's just one-block stale chaintips, so this was kinda cool and made me think.
Not selfishness, imo. I mean, Foundry USA is the top dog in hashing power, so it makes sense they’d mine more blocks. Two stale blocks have happened before and eventually one will be the leader while the others fade away.
Foundry isn’t just mining for themselves, though. They have a minimum hash rate to join them, must be around 100ph now. Back in 2021 it was 20ph when I checked. So yeah, they have to make a profit for their miners or risk lawsuits. It’s all business.
I think the last issue with Foundry was about security protocols not keeping up with the blocks. They probably missed some blocks because their nodes are too locked down. All those security checks can really slow things down.
I disagree. From some Stratum work logs that were shared anonymously, Foundry seemed to know about the other blocks from Antpool and ViaBTC. They mined on top of those for a few seconds but then shifted to their own. Not exactly selfish mining, more like a calculated move.
Could be. Just remember that Foundry might not be checking their own blocks very well. When you've got multiple locations and firewalls, it can take a while to validate. So, they might have been distracted mining one block while another came in.
But Foundry only has about 30-40% hash rate. Ignoring a block like that could really backfire on them. If the competing blocks were confirmed, they would definitely lose. I’m sure they don’t have someone just gambling on which blocks to mine.
Looking at mempool.space, Foundry has never mined those so-called empty blocks. Details on the timing are kinda hazy, but it seems Foundry was aware of other blocks. They really seem to keep up with their Stratum work.
Going a bit off-topic here... found a paper from January 2024, and it says neither Foundry nor MARA has ever mined an empty block. Good for them! Unlike other big pools that have a decent chunk of empty blocks.
From the timestamps, it looks like there was some delay for Foundry. Makes sense to keep mining their own block. Why wouldn’t they if that’s their current block? Makes sense to stay on it for profit.
Hey there! I get the frustration from Antpool and ViaBTC, but I think Foundry just got a bit lucky here. Parts of the network probably hadn’t seen the competition yet. As the biggest pool, it’s typical they’d have a few blocks in a row, but seven is kind of nuts.
You might want to fix your wording... Foundry hasn’t mined an empty block recently. But MARA has four empty blocks this past few months. So, it’s not like they’re totally innocent. And yeah, it's a side note.