December 28, 2017
Abstract
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In this piece, we list 19 Bitcoin consensus rule changes (or 18 as an accidental one “failed”), which represents what we believe to be almost every significant such event in Bitcoin’s history. At least three of these incidents resulted in an identifiable chainsplit, lasting approximately 51, 24, and six blocks, in 2010, 2013 and 2015, respectively.
This report was originaly published in BitMEX Research blog. Later it has been updated. The updated list now includes the 2018 security incident and the 2021 Taproot activation.
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July 28, 2015
This article by Arvind Narayanan was first published on Freedom to Tinker computer science blog.
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On March 11, 2013, Bitcoin experienced a technical crisis. Versions 0.7 and 0.8 of the software diverged from each other in behavior due to a bug, causing the block chain to “fork” into two. Considering how catastrophic a hard fork can be, the crisis was resolved quickly with remarkably little damage owing to the exemplary competence of the developers in charge. The event gives us a never-before-never-again look into Bitcoin’s inner workings. In this post, I’ll do a play-by-play analysis of the dramatic minutes, and draw many surprising lessons. For a summary of the event, see here.
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