Bitcoin Just Got Invaded By A “Big, Unknown Miner,” What’s Happening?

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency network whose coin, BTC, is the most valuable, seems to have been invaded by an unknown miner. And the community has the new guest on their radar.

In the last few hours, the entity has not only plugged into the network but has proceeded to mine several blocks, getting rewarded with the precious 6.25 BTC. 

What’s intriguing is that trackers cannot pick out the true identity of the miner who has usurped the established pools such as Binance Pool, AntPool, and even giant mining farms like Foundry USA. 

For the last day, the miner has verified over 10 Bitcoin blocks, earning 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 in possibly thousands of mining rigs to stay competitive and verify blocks successfully, it is almost likely that the “unknown” entity is a mining pool.

In proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin, a group of miners, that is, retail individuals operating mining nodes, can join hands and merge their computing power called hash rate in “pools.” Whenever they do this, they stand a chance of verifying a block of BTC transactions. 

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

With the Bitcoin hash rate constantly rising and more miners pouring in, mining pools dominate. However, several pools are tailored to meet the needs of various miners. Applicable fees, reliability, and the size of their hash rate are some considerations that may also affect reputation. However, over the years, some of the biggest include AntPool and ViaBTC.

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

Whether this will also turn out to be true or false will later be verified. 

This is because attribution “depends on who the miner says they are. It’d be easy to impersonate another pool and not guaranteed 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.space, the 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 in late May 24.