About today's error in the Bitcoin system

Today, at about one in the morning UTC, an emergency warning was sent over the Bitcoin network to stop searching for new blocks (mining) on ​​version 0.8 clients. A message appeared on bitcointalk.org calling for the same. In addition, it was proposed to suspend any actions related to sending BTC.


')
The following happened. A network version 0.8 client generated block number 225430 ( 000000000000015c50b165fcdd33556f8b44800c5298943ac70b112df480c023 ) containing 1752 transactions. This turned out to be too much for version 0.7 and older clients. The Berkley DB library used to store blocks could not import this monster and the block was not recognized as valid on all clients of version <0.8 .

That is, all active clients of the Bitcoin network were divided into those who accepted 000000000000015c50b165fcdd33556f8b44800c5298943ac70b112df480c023, and those who abandoned this block and received another, smaller, block 000000000040004758754404404754754756756756754756754756754756752756256

And this is a disgrace. The integrity of the network has been broken. For several hours, the opposing customers could not decide which chain was more correct and created new blocks for their chains. In the Bitcoin network, there is a means for automatically exiting such difficulties: a longer chain of blocks is taken on faith. But without administrative measures, this system would not have worked. A significant portion of customers, and, more importantly, many miners' pools (miners), have already been updated to version 0.8. If mining, the search for new blocks, had not been stopped on this version, now we would have two variants of bitcoin, rapidly diverging further and further. Together with a bunch of quite real money that they enclosed. Fortunately, this did not happen. As of now, the chain from 00000000000001c108384350f74090433e7fcf79a606b8e797f065b130575932 has won.

But the sediment remained. It's not even the fact that in the code that supports the Bitcoin system there may be bugs, they are everywhere. But who controls it all. This incident clearly showed that even such a well-thought-out system is vulnerable to the arbitrariness of very few people, namely, the owners of the mining pools. More than 70% of new blocks are now located in pools, and not on individual clients. The idea behind the system, that the majority of respectable people can resist a few villains, if such appear, does not work now. The winner in a possible fight will be the one who has thicker computing power, and only.


UPD: Unfortunately, not without consequences. Almost double waste occurred. 211 BTC, equivalent to about $ 10,000 at current prices, was spent twice. Almost, because according to the main block chain, money was spent only once. But the processing of the payment system, under the tense conditions of last night, worked twice, for both chains of blocks. Transaction Details