- The invalid block requested for a 13.26 BTC reward instead of the standard 12.5 BTC reward.
- Jameson Lopp, the creator of statoshi.info, tweeted that this probably happened because of a bug.
BitMEX Research reported that Bitmain-owned mining pool Antpool lost at least $150,000 worth of Bitcoin mining rewards. The Bitcoin network rejected a block after it got mined, canceling out the 12.5 BTC reward intended for the miner. Along with that, all the resources which were spent mining the block was also wasted.
According to BitMEX, the Bitcoin network denied Antpool’s block because it displayed a wrong coinbase transaction. Instead of 12.5 BTC, the block requested for a 13.26 BTC reward. Post the network rejection, the transactions inside the block were undone. BitMEX tweeted:
“The coinbase value was too high, presumably because this included the transaction fees, but due to some error the transactions themselves were not included.”
Jameson Lopp, the creator of statoshi.info, tweeted that this probably happened because of a bug:
“Yes, it looks like the block was found just seconds after the previous block. My guess would be that there was a bug in the block template generator that failed to clear out the txn fees from the previous template being worked upon.”