Cryptocurrency mining is one of the most popular activities among cryptocurrency investors. Blockchains rely on miners to validate transactions and add them to the public ledger. Mining pools are where miners cooperate to increase their chances of successfully verifying blocks, and in return, receive rewards from the pool. F2pool is one of the largest mining pools in the world, accounting for 17.2% of the overall hash rate on the Bitcoin network.

Recently, BitMEX noticed an invalid block on the bitcoin blockchain, produced by F2pool, which questions its dependence on the pool for transaction confirmation. BitMEX suspects that the invalid block was likely caused by bad signature operations, but the reason behind it is still not clear.

ForkMonitor, a node monitoring tool created by BitMEX, was launched to keep track of hard and soft forks on the Bitcoin blockchain. It is currently connected to 13 nodes of Bitcoin and its hard forks, such as Bitcoin Cash. The tool is also used to detect unintentional consensus bugs, which may lead to the creation of invalid blocks. If double spending, a lack of funds, or another faulty script are the reasons, the node will promptly reject the block and the transaction will remain in limbo.

In the cryptocurrency space, miners must always be careful while validating blocks to avoid any potential losses. It is important to confirm blocks correctly or else the transaction won't be accepted and the miners may end up losing their rewards. Despite the fact that F2pool remains one of the most trusted mining pools, it’s always important to double-check the activities of miners and raise awareness of fake or invalid blocks.



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