This can be a speculative report translated for non-specialists. The narrator is an investigator who arrived lengthy after people have been gone. The whole lot described as measured depends on actual Bitcoin mechanics: block intervals, issue/goal, timestamp guidelines, and information obtainable from block headers and the coinbase transaction.
We arrived on a silent planet. The final clocks nonetheless ticking have been embedded in a ledger whose authors have been gone.
REPORT START
Workforce: Survey Unit 3
Artifact: International ledger (“Bitcoin”)
Approach: Light-weight chain evaluation (headers + coinbase), mapped to photo voltaic time
Technique
We analyzed the digital artifact often known as Bitcoin utilizing what we recognized as block headers (timestamp, goal / “bits”, model) and every block’s coinbase transaction (top, output worth, and tag textual content).
From our earlier preliminary evaluate we’ve constructed the next information factors:
- Charges have been handled as: coinbase output − programmed subsidy (charges truly claimed by the miner).
- Timestamps have been calibrated to the planet’s photo voltaic day and 12 months and bounded by Bitcoin’s median-time-past (MTP) rule.
- Proof of tip rivalry (stale blocks) was inferred from timing irregularities and MTP edge results; the place any stale-block archives survived on remoted nodes, they corroborated these intervals.
- Issue retargets occurred each 2016 blocks with the actual_timespan clamped to 0.25×–4× of the two-week goal, implying a per-epoch issue change bounded to at most 4× in both course.
Findings
Cessation of funds
We recorded ΔH (blocks earlier than current) to be ≈ 86,000. Coinbase outputs have been equal to the programmed subsidy, implying charges ≈ 0. Over that very same interval, common block spacing settled close to ~60–70 minutes with a long-segment imply of ~65 minutes.
Interpretation: Human-directed funds had ceased. Mechanical issuance continued.
Courting: 86,000 blocks × ~65 minutes ≈ ~10.6 years earlier than our arrival.
Energy-source timing signatures
Submit-collapse block arrivals weren’t memoryless. Diurnal and seasonal cadence encoded the unattended energy combine:
- Daytime clusters with nighttime gaps repeated throughout low-latitude longitudes → unattended photo voltaic with degrading storage.
- Irregular multi-hour bursts punctuated by multi-day voids at mid-latitudes → wind that faulted throughout storms and wasn’t reset.
- Persistent in a single day presence at just a few longitudes → small hydro or geothermal working islanded.
We aligned repeated intraday timestamp clusters to native photo voltaic midday to estimate longitude bands of surviving websites. The energy of seasonal variation in block arrivals gave coarse latitude bands. Exact website coordinates weren’t recoverable.
Issue terraces (the fade, timed)
Instantly after the hashrate shock, common block time jumped from ~10 minutes to hours. As a result of issue solely retargets each 2016 blocks and every epoch’s change is bounded, the chain fashioned terraces, plateaus of near-constant common interval separated by discrete down-steps.
Consultant sequence noticed within the world ledger:
- Terrace A: ~16–17 h/block for 2016 blocks → elapsed ~3.8 years.
- Terrace B: ~4.1 h/block for 2016 blocks → ~0.95 years.
- Terrace C: ~62–65 min/block for 2016 blocks → ~87–91 days.
- Terrace D: ~15–16 min/block for ~22 days, after which renewed {hardware} failures re-slowed the chain.
The place residual hashrate was ≈1% of pre-event, Terrace A alone spanned ~3.8 years at ~16.7 h/block. At ≈0.1%, the identical 2016-block epoch would have stretched to ~38 years at ~167 h/block, nonetheless inside the protocol’s adjustment certain. One area’s cadence matched the ~16–17 h/block case.
Find out how to learn a terrace (labored calc):
Epoch size = 2016 blocks. If the noticed interval on a plateau is 16.7 hours, elapsed time for that epoch ≈ 2016 × 16.7 h ≈ 3.84 years.
Community decay captured within the report
As soon as correct clocks vanished, miner timestamps drifted in coherent regional patterns. Bitcoin’s MTP rule restricted abuse of timestamps (every new block needed to be later than the median of the prior 11) however didn’t eradicate drift signatures.
Interval variance and clustered MTP-bounded timestamp advances revealed intermittent partitions and tip rivalry; when any hyperlink resumed (e.g., satellite tv for pc, microwave), competing branches reconciled and solely the profitable department remained canonical.
With out preserved stale-block archives, measured rivalry is a decrease certain.
Maker marks that outlived their makers
Coinbase tag strings (pool labels) and steady nonce/model fingerprints endured for years after charge exercise ended. Defaults have been by no means modified as soon as operators have been gone, leaving software program/{hardware} households identifiable within the report. (Coinbase tags are seen through the coinbase transaction; headers alone don’t carry them.)
Courting key occasions (labored examples)
- “Funds ended.” Window the place coinbase output = subsidy started at ΔH ≈ 86,000. Utilizing the noticed ~65 min/block: ~10.6 years earlier than current.
- First post-shock retarget accomplished. The preliminary 2016-block discount completed ~3.8 years after the hashrate collapse (plateau at ~16.7 h/block).
- Ultimate detectable hydro cadence. The final night-heavy, near-constant signature ceased ~1.9 years earlier than current; the prior seven spring seasons confirmed rising multi-day outages in step with consumption clogging and flood injury.
All conversions use noticed phase averages, not the nominal 10-minute goal.
Length estimate (how lengthy machines ran)
- Minimal confirmed: >10 years after financial exercise ceased (from charge collapse to final hydro-like cadence).
- Believable higher certain (regional): Multi-decadal operation at extraordinarily low hashrate, the place a single 2016-block epoch spans many years because of the adjustment certain.
The one necessities have been: (a) at the very least one surviving energy supply and (b) an intermittent path for some blocks to achieve the worldwide community.
Abstract report
In the end, the ledger reveals when funds stopped, how power tapered, how networks frayed, and the way lengthy unattended machines stored writing time, sufficient to reconstruct the top of exercise from headers and coinbase alone.
END OF REPORT
What readers ought to take from this
- Bitcoin behaves like an instrument. Issue guidelines and timestamp constraints transduce bodily actuality, energy availability, operator absence, and community partitions right into a sturdy time sequence.
- Bodily failure, not worth, ended the write. Mud, clogged screens, tripped breakers, drifting clocks, damaged hyperlinks.
- These forensics apply at this time. Block spacing, charge strain (through coinbase delta), timestamp drift, and retarget dynamics are actionable diagnostics for present-day outages and partitions.
Limits
- Longitude bands have been estimable; exact websites weren’t. Latitude was inferred solely coarsely from seasonality energy.
- Absolutely remoted “shadow mining” could have produced blocks that by no means reached the worldwide ledger.
- With out preserved stale-block archives, rivalry estimates are decrease bounds; some races depart no canonical hint.
- As soon as synchronized time sources failed, MTP primarily preserved relative ordering, not correct civil time; long-range calendar dates carry further uncertainty even when intraday/seasonal construction is evident.
- In very low-hashrate regimes dominated by a single surviving operator, timestamps might be marched inside MTP limits, partially masking diurnal signatures; cross-checks with nonce patterns and coinbase tags mitigate however don’t eradicate this.
- Most OP_RETURN payloads weren’t decodable at scale and weren’t interpreted.
