Author: Pieter Wuille 2013-03-12 01:01:35
Published on: 2013-03-12T01:01:35+00:00
On March 12th, 2013, Pieter Wuille posted on a Bitcoin forum that block 000000000000015c50b165fcdd33556f8b44800c5298943ac70b112df480c023 (height=225430) had caused pre-0.8 and 0.8 nodes to fork, with both chains being mined but the 0.8 chain growing faster. After some emergency discussion, it was decided that the majority mining power should be switched back to the "old" chain which 0.7 accepts (with 00000000000001c108384350f74090433e7fcf79a606b8e797f065b130575932 at height 225430), as this is the only chain every client out there would accept. BTC Guild was switching to 0.7, so the majority should abandon the 0.8 chain soon. Miners were advised to revert to 0.7 until the cause of the issue was better understood, while merchants who were on 0.8 were advised to stop processing transactions until both sides had switched to the same chain again. In an earlier post on the same day, Pieter Wuille noted that many reports of 0.7 nodes getting stuck around block 225430 were due to running out of lock entries in the BDB database. Immediate solutions included upgrading to 0.8 or manually setting the number of lock objects higher in the database. There was a risk of having several forked chains with smaller blocks, which are accepted by 0.7 nodes, leading to an emergency situation. People were asked to contact pool operators to see which fork they were on, while those unsure were advised to stop processing transactions. Blockexplorer and blockchain.info were also stuck.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T16:36:34.570298+00:00