Bitcoin is only as trustworthy and safe as the software behind it, and nowadays, the Bitcoin community is experiencing various issues related to it.
Update published by Bitcoin.org on July 6th, 2015 at 04:00: “A new fork occurred starting 5 July at 21:30 with three blocks before the valid chain again became the strongest chain. See the recently-added list of forks. Reports that the situation has past are not correct. Please continue to wait 30 more confirmations than you usually would wait before accepting a transaction.”
On Saturday, some problems created by the planned upgrade affected transactions on the Bitcoin network. According to the Bitcoin community website, transactions confirmed after 8 AM UTC were affected due to the generation of invalid blocks, which were generated after the implementation of BIP66 strict DER signatures.
In fact, it depends on the software whether invalid blocks can be detected and rejected or not. If the software can’t cope with it, the confirmations displayed aren’t real.
Let’s consider the list provided by Bitcoin.org:
“Early morning on 4 July 2015, the 950/1000 (95%) threshold was reached. Shortly thereafter, a small miner (part of the non-upgraded 5%) mined an invalid block–as was an expected occurrence. Unfortunately, it turned out that roughly half the network hash rate was mining without fully validating blocks (called SPV mining), and built new blocks on top of that invalid block. Note that the roughly 50% of the network that was SPV mining had explicitly indicated that they would enforce the BIP66 rules. By not doing so, several large miners have lost over $50,000 dollars worth of mining income so far,” reads the Bitcoin community website.
Moreover, according to the above mentioned site, software that detects valid blocks can show transactions as confirmed when they really aren’t. Old versions of Bitcoin Core and lightweight (SPV) wallets are particularly affected.
The issue is being fixed making all miners fully validate their coins. If this happens, Bitcoin.org is going to decrease its recent recommendation of waiting 30 extra confirmations to a lower number.
Eugenia graduated from Minsk State Linguistic University with a degree in Intercultural Communication, Translation/Interpretation (Italian, English). Currently she works as a business analyst, freelance interpreter and tutor. She’s fond of numismatics, photos, good books and sports, adores travelling and cooking.
