The BMG mining pool of the Bitcoin Cash network on Saturday November 10 put the 32 MB block size to the test by mining record numbers. The pool mined multiple 32 MB blocks to set the new record for the greatest number of transactions confirmed by a pool.
The first block at height 556034 was the biggest block ever mined on the BCH chain and the process confirmed over 166,000 transactions. Hours later, the pool mined four more 32 MB block sizes.
The supporters of the coin are in a celebratory mood as this is the very first test of the 32 MB block size. The closest the block limit came to being tested was on September 4 when a block size of 23.15 MB was processed on block 546423 on the same pool.
The record-setting block was processed at approximately 7:45 a.m. EST, BMG mining processed block 556034 which was approximately 31997.624 kB (31.99 MB) in size. The 166,000 transactions nearly doubled that of September which processed 97,318 transactions.
When the information was made available, many BCH proponents went on social media to celebrate the accomplishment. One of the metrics they shared was that the 166,000 transactions processed by the mega block 556034 is more than half the number of transactions usually processed by the network in a day.
The BCH network has confirmed 1.3 million transactions in the past 24 hours mainly due to the record block sizes mined by the BMG.
Despite the celebrations, blockchain analysts observed that the first 32 MB block did not propagate seamlessly as it should. Some community members also observed the same flaw – four different implementations dropping off temporarily from the network.
The largest of the nodes that dropped off were from Bitcoin Unlimited hosts which were reported not to have upgraded to the latest version of the BCH client.
It is interesting that the mega block mining of the Bitcoin Cash network is coming a few days ahead of the proposed fork of two contentious teams of the Bitcoin Cash network whose point of divergence is consensus changes in the parent network.
Cashnodes.io, the analytical site reported a consistent pattern of BU 1.3.0.1 and 1.4 nodes had dropped and many version 1.5 BU Cash users said their nodes ran properly.
“My BU Cash 1.5.0.1 and Electron X node showed increased CPU usage during the many transactions, but ran fine otherwise,”
stated a user who runs a BU Cash node on a Reddit post.
It was also observed that Bitcoin Cash hashrate in comparison to that of Bitcoin has shut up. Bitcoin News reported,
“Another interesting piece of data that stemmed from the mega-block fiesta was the BCH and BTC hashrate shift. According to Fork.lol statistics, the 3-hour stacked averages for the relative BCH hashrate in the percentage of totals had climbed significantly, eating into the SHA256 BTC-based hashrate.”
With the mega mining observed today, it is apparent that this will become a regular occurrence on the Bitcoin Cash network which has largely enjoyed good publicity ahead of its upcoming fork.
