This can be a speculative report translated for non-specialists. The narrator is an investigator who arrived lengthy after people had 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 had been embedded in a ledger whose authors had been gone.
REPORT START
Crew: Survey Unit 3
Artifact: World ledger (“Bitcoin”)
Approach: Light-weight chain evaluation (headers + coinbase), mapped to photo voltaic time
Technique
We analyzed the digital artifact referred to 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 overview we’ve constructed the next information factors:
- Charges had been handled as: coinbase output − programmed subsidy (charges truly claimed by the miner).
- Timestamps had been calibrated to the planet’s photo voltaic day and yr and bounded by Bitcoin’s median-time-past (MTP) rule.
- Proof of tip competition (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 had 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.
Relationship: 86,000 blocks × ~65 minutes ≈ ~10.6 years earlier than our arrival.
Energy-source timing signatures
Publish-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 shaped terraces, plateaus of near-constant common interval separated by discrete down-steps.
Consultant sequence noticed within the international 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 sure. One area’s cadence matched the ~16–17 h/block case.
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 file
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 remove drift signatures.
Interval variance and clustered MTP-bounded timestamp advances revealed intermittent partitions and tip competition; when any hyperlink resumed (e.g., satellite tv for pc, microwave), competing branches reconciled and solely the successful department remained canonical.
With out preserved stale-block archives, measured competition is a decrease sure.
Maker marks that outlived their makers
Coinbase tag strings (pool labels) and steady nonce/model fingerprints endured for years after charge exercise ended. Defaults had been by no means modified as soon as operators had been gone, leaving software program/{hardware} households identifiable within the file. (Coinbase tags are seen through the coinbase transaction; headers alone don’t carry them.)
Relationship 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 according to consumption clogging and flood harm.
All conversions use noticed section averages, not the nominal 10-minute goal.
Period estimate (how lengthy machines ran)
- Minimal confirmed: >10 years after financial exercise ceased (from charge collapse to final hydro-like cadence).
- Believable higher sure (regional): Multi-decadal operation at extraordinarily low hashrate, the place a single 2016-block epoch spans a long time as a result of adjustment sure.
The one necessities had been: (a) at the least one surviving energy supply and (b) an intermittent path for some blocks to succeed in the worldwide community.
Abstract report
Finally, the ledger exhibits when funds stopped, how power tapered, how networks frayed, and the way lengthy unattended machines saved writing time, sufficient to reconstruct the tip 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 value, ended the write. Mud, clogged screens, tripped breakers, drifting clocks, damaged hyperlinks.
- These forensics apply in the present day. Block spacing, charge stress (through coinbase delta), timestamp drift, and retarget dynamics are actionable diagnostics for present-day outages and partitions.
Limits
- Longitude bands had been estimable; exact websites weren’t. Latitude was inferred solely coarsely from seasonality energy.
- Totally remoted “shadow mining” could have produced blocks that by no means reached the worldwide ledger.
- With out preserved stale-block archives, competition estimates are decrease bounds; some races go away no canonical hint.
- As soon as synchronized time sources failed, MTP primarily preserved relative ordering, not correct civil time; long-range calendar dates carry extra uncertainty even when intraday/seasonal construction is evident.
- In very low-hashrate regimes dominated by a single surviving operator, timestamps could possibly be marched inside MTP limits, partially masking diurnal signatures; cross-checks with nonce patterns and coinbase tags mitigate however don’t remove this.
- Most OP_RETURN payloads weren’t decodable at scale and weren’t interpreted.