Bitcoin Just Got Attacked By A “Large, Unknown Miner”, What’s Happening?

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency network whose coin, BTC, is the most valuable, appears to have been hacked by an unknown miner. And there’s a new guest on the community’s radar.

unknown miner dominates

In the past few hours, the entity has not only plugged into the network, but has also started mining several blocks, being rewarded with the precious 6.25 BTC.

What is intriguing is that trackers cannot identify the true identity of a miner who has taken over established pools such as Binance Pool, Antpool, and giant mining farms such as Foundry USA.

For the last day, the miners have Verified Over 10 bitcoin blocks, yielding over 65 BTC worth over $1.7 million at spot rates.

While there is a chance that a “big” player is new to bitcoin and has plugged possibly thousands of mining rigs in order to remain competitive and successfully verify blocks, it is almost as likely that the “unknown” entity is a mining pool.

In a proof-of-work network like bitcoin, a group of miners, that is, retail individuals operating mining nodes, can join hands and pool their computing power into a “pool” called the hash rate. Whenever they do this, they have a chance to verify a block of BTC transactions.

In return, the network automatically rewards them with not only block rewards of 6.25 BTC, but also the fees associated with the block. Although rare, the accumulated fee in a block can exceed 50% of the block reward distributed from the protocol level.

Mining pools have become dominant as the bitcoin hash rate continues to rise and more miners come on board. However, many pools are designed to meet the needs of different miners. Fees applied, credibility and the size of their hash rate are some of the considerations that can affect reputation as well. However, over the years, some of the biggest include Antpool and ViaBTC.

Is it F2Pool?

It is speculated that the “unknown” entity is F2Pool. The error is displayed on trackers because “the mempool’s attribution logic is missing them.”

It will also be true or false it will be verified later.

it is Because Attribution “depends on who the miners say they are. It would be easy to impersonate another pool and there is no guarantee that that pool would notice and deny it was them.

F2Pool is one of the oldest and largest mining pools in the world.

according to data from mempool.spaceThe pool controls 8.19% of the total bitcoin hash rate.

While it is popular, recent data shows There could have been a hitch in the attribution logic. Trackers show that the last time F2Pool mined was at the end of May 24.

Feature image from Canva, chart from TradingView