https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000003be80b432a84daf900e043f3a4f41bfa22921ae0ef6c
Seems like mining 0.1 sat/vB transactions did not pay off for MARA. At the same time SBI Crypto found a block that only goes down to 1 sat/vB. Since most of the nodes still have their policy set to a minimum fee of 1 sat/vB, propagating a block that includes these extremely cheap transactions tends to be slower than a block that can be immediately reconstructed via Compact Block Relay.
FWIW, mempool.space saw the SBI Crypto block before the Mara Pool block, even though the latter has a lower timestamp.
SBI Block:
Timestamp 1770771272
firstSeen: 1770771262
Mara block:
timestamp: 1770771249
firstSeen: 1770771263
SBI:
➜ ~ curl -sSL "https://mempool.space/api/v1/block/00000000000000000000626a49c9c9047fb8b49a8216daf5e448d44517d38a55"
{"id":"00000000000000000000626a49c9c9047fb8b49a8216daf5e448d44517d38a55","height":935976,"version":537133060,"timestamp":1770771272,"bits":386022526,"nonce":1277852845,"difficulty":125864590119494.3,"merkle_root":"086931e440923cc0d63b41b053c3243829623a8e27c54b5a277d4628ba44d7bc","tx_count":1725,"size":1137163,"weight":2635573,"previousblockhash":"000000000000000000002c36a1ae1dd679f3edef9b8ad579e010cbb119a9041d","mediantime":1770768987,"extras":{"totalFees":1697395,"medianFee":1,"feeRange":[1,1,1.1000649772579598,2,2.3191489361702127,4,376.09154929577466],"reward":314197395,"pool":{"id":112,"name":"SBI Crypto","slug":"sbicrypto","minerNames":null},"avgFee":984,"avgFeeRate":2,"coinbaseRaw":"0328480e0431d38b692f53424943727970746f2e636f6d20506f6f6c2f75731606c2a800db0e0000000000","coinbaseAddress":"bc1qey5lp33mkzsk93pmg3d89ml75xchgv4lx50w7j","coinbaseAddresses":["bc1qey5lp33mkzsk93pmg3d89ml75xchgv4lx50w7j"],"coinbaseSignature":"OP_0 OP_PUSHBYTES_20 c929f0c63bb0a162c43b445a72effea1b17432bf","coinbaseSignatureAscii":"\u0003(H\u000e\u00041Ói/SBICrypto.com Pool/us\u0016\u0006¨\u0000Û\u000e\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000","avgTxSize":659.0600000000001,"totalInputs":4748,"totalOutputs":4495,"totalOutputAmt":197764806449,"medianFeeAmt":282,"feePercentiles":[99,142,180,282,502,1128,87150],"segwitTotalTxs":1598,"segwitTotalSize":960517,"segwitTotalWeight":1929097,"header":"040004201d04a919b1cb10e079d58a9befedf379d61daea1362c00000000000000000000bcd744ba28467d275a4bc5278e3a62293824c353b0413bd6c03c9240e431690848d38b697e3c0217ad7c2a4c","utxoSetChange":-253,"utxoSetSize":164429626,"totalInputAmt":197766503844,"virtualSize":658893.25,"firstSeen":1770771262,"orphans":[{"height":935976,"hash":"000000000000000000003be80b432a84daf900e043f3a4f41bfa22921ae0ef6c","status":"valid-headers","prevhash":"000000000000000000002c36a1ae1dd679f3edef9b8ad579e010cbb119a9041d"}],"matchRate":99.71,"expectedFees":1832037,"expectedWeight":3991965}}%
Mara:
➜ curl -sSL "https://mempool.space/api/v1/block/000000000000000000003be80b432a84daf900e043f3a4f41bfa22921ae0ef6c"
{"id":"000000000000000000003be80b432a84daf900e043f3a4f41bfa22921ae0ef6c","height":935976,"version":537133056,"timestamp":1770771249,"bits":386022526,"nonce":243793017,"difficulty":125864590119494.3,"merkle_root":"cba9fea0a940a897d5bfe17e1052775b0f449eb4d7639c1308a7fb3d29da4021","tx_count":3294,"size":1728560,"weight":3992984,"previousblockhash":"000000000000000000002c36a1ae1dd679f3edef9b8ad579e010cbb119a9041d","mediantime":1770768987,"extras":{"totalFees":1794462,"medianFee":1,"feeRange":[0.22545454545454546,0.25004899078973153,0.2993672267073969,1.0009066183136899,2.00711743772242,3.004366812227074,377.42049469964667],"reward":314294462,"pool":{"id":115,"name":"MARA Pool","slug":"marapool","minerNames":null},"avgFee":545,"avgFeeRate":2,"coinbaseRaw":"0328480e0426d38b697c204d415241204d61646520696e2055534120f09f87baf09f87b8207c763034fabe6d6d7149ff559bea9fad833b54ede3e32a951a69ae9344c565090d1c02e811194b100100000000000000132f8f585400a8390000ffffffff","coinbaseAddress":"32i1m6gNcSHwiPX9nfTNXVjme9j5DU8y5g","coinbaseAddresses":["32i1m6gNcSHwiPX9nfTNXVjme9j5DU8y5g"],"coinbaseSignature":"OP_HASH160 OP_PUSHBYTES_20 0b2867e31c2c5e8ebb55631eececd31da8e25108 OP_EQUAL","coinbaseSignatureAscii":"\u0003(H\u000e\u0004&Ói| MARA Made in USA ðºð¸ |v04ú¾mmqIÿU;Tíãã*\u001ai®DÅe\t\r\u001c\u0002è\u0011\u0019K\u0010\u0001\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0013/XT\u0000¨9\u0000\u0000ÿÿÿÿ","avgTxSize":524.76,"totalInputs":6597,"totalOutputs":9172,"totalOutputAmt":196900014001,"medianFeeAmt":151,"feePercentiles":[16,21,42,151,298,635,87150],"segwitTotalTxs":0,"segwitTotalSize":0,"segwitTotalWeight":0,"header":"000004201d04a919b1cb10e079d58a9befedf379d61daea1362c000000000000000000002140da293dfba708139c63d7b49e440f5b7752107ee1bfd597a840a9a0fea9cb31d38b697e3c021779fc870e","utxoSetChange":0,"utxoSetSize":164429626,"totalInputAmt":197766503844,"virtualSize":998246,"firstSeen":1770771263,"orphans":[{"height":935976,"hash":"000000000000000000003be80b432a84daf900e043f3a4f41bfa22921ae0ef6c","status":"valid-headers","prevhash":"000000000000000000002c36a1ae1dd679f3edef9b8ad579e010cbb119a9041d"}],"matchRate":100,"expectedFees":1832037,"expectedWeight":3991965}}%
Just checked the logs on my node and yup, same for me:
2026-02-11T00:54:22.368288+00:00 Saw new header hash=00000000000000000000626a49c9c9047fb8b49a8216daf5e448d44517d38a55 height=935976 2026-02-11T00:54:22.631972+00:00 UpdateTip: new best=00000000000000000000626a49c9c9047fb8b49a8216daf5e448d44517d38a55 height=935976 version=0x20040004 log2_work=96.077678 tx=1308167628 date='2026-02-11T00:54:32Z' progress=1.000000 cache=369.6MiB(2836800txo) warning='Miner violated version bit protocol' 2026-02-11T00:54:23.120026+00:00 Saw new header hash=000000000000000000003be80b432a84daf900e043f3a4f41bfa22921ae0ef6c height=935976Also, according to stratum.work, only Mara and Via saw the Mara block first:
Do you think that was the reason? Or it was the next block found that determined the outcome?
Likely yes, but impossible to know for sure. The block after that was found by Foundry USA. It would seem that they happened to receive the SBI Crypto block first.
But sure, let's investigate a bit:
The MARA block was found at 00:54:09 UTC.
The SBI Crypto block was found at 00:54:32 UTC.
Miners can of course have an inaccurate clock but let's check:
The
ntimeof both SBI Crypto and MARA tends to be very close to UTC:https://stratum.work/template/SBI%20Crypto
https://stratum.work/template/MARA%20Pool
I used https://www.epochconverter.com/hex to convert the hexadecimal
ntimeto a human readable format.So it is likely that the times are indeed correct.
Even though the MARA block was found 23 seconds before the SBI Crypto block, MARA still lost the block race.
EDIT: On second thought, looking at the block template update intervals: (https://stratum.work/timing) MARA and SBI Crypto both update their block template in ~30 second intervals. A 23 second difference is still within that time frame. So hard to say when exactly these blocks were found.
The next block always determines the outcome.
You want to look at the arrival times that are logged by various entities. You can e.g., get it via the mempool.space API, and 0xb10c has a repository where he collates block arrival times from various nodes (unfortunately, it was last updated three months ago, so these blocks are not found there yet).
Thanks for posting this. It seems like a good example of something that the tolerant minority of node runners wouldn't change. And therefore a pretty good example of filters working.
lmao GOOD
~bitcoin_Mining