Bitcoin network initiated a rare event where two highly competitive pools co-discovered the same block. In the end, one of the pools won the block while the other founded a stale block. According to analysts, such an event takes place every few months.
The competition occurred between the two current, most influential pools, Antpool and BTC.com. Both the firms are close contenders, discovering almost the same number of blocks daily. The leading pools hold a neck-to-neck competition as they grow their hashrate to grab some of the last 12.5 BTC block rewards, as bitcoin halving seems to come nearer. As a result, BTC.com came up as the winner while Antpool discovered a stale block.
Even at this level of difficulty, blocks arrive at a commendable pace in every ten minutes. Each Bitcoin block is distributed through 9,301 currently available nodes.
As bitcoin possesses a serious difficulty, it is unlikely that two blocks discover a block header number at the same time. However, this is not an unusual event for Ethereum. Many regular instances of “uncle” blocks can be witnessed on the ETH network. The blocks are discovered but not propagated, hence, receiving a partial reward.
