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Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital has acknowledged that it mined an invalid Bitcoin (BTC) block during an “experiment” designed to enhance the firm’s operations.
In a post dated Sept. 27, Marathon indicated that it allocates a small fraction of the firm’s hashrate for these experiments and emphasized that they were not attempting to modify the network in any manner:
“In no way was this experiment an attempt to alter Bitcoin Core in any way.” Marathon stated, highlighting that they rectified the mistake promptly upon discovering the invalid block.
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
Marathon explained that the bug, which originated from the firm’s internal development environment, was not connected to Marathon’s Bitcoin production pool or Bitcoin Core — the primary software used to interface with the Bitcoin network and operate a node.
The incident took place on Sept. 26 at 9:42 pm UTC on block 809478, as reported by mempool.space.
Multiple Bitcoin developers, along with BitMEX Research, attributed the invalid block to a “transaction ordering issue.” Bitcoin developer “mononaut” suggested that Marathon’s error stemmed from sorting the transactions in order of ascending absolute fees.
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This is what MARA's invalid block at 809478 looks like:
– pink transactions no longer exist in the main chain
– blue transactions are invalid due to ordering (they spend an output from a transaction included later in the block) https://t.co/SJI1azOB5Z pic.twitter.com/5gY9TRA2eG— mononaut (@mononautical) September 27, 2023
Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair recommended that Marathon should have performed this experiment on a testnet prior to executing it on Bitcoin’s mainnet.
In hindsight, Marathon stated that Bitcoin “functioned exactly as designed” by rejecting the invalid block:
“This incident, while unintended, underscores the robust security of the Bitcoin network, which rejected and rectified the anomaly.”
Related: Marathon Digital Q2 results miss revenue and earnings forecasts
Cointelegraph reached out to Marathon for a statement but did not receive an immediate reply.
Marathon’s (MARA) share price decreased by 2.91% to $8.01 during the opening hours on Sept. 27, according to Google Finance.
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