Here’s a speculative file translated for non-specialists. The narrator is an investigator who arrived long after folk had been gone. The entire lot described as measured relies on staunch Bitcoin mechanics: block intervals, agonize/target, timestamp guidelines, and recordsdata available from block headers and the coinbase transaction.
We arrived on a nonetheless planet. The final clocks light ticking had been embedded in a ledger whose authors had been gone.
REPORT START
Crew: Gaze Unit 3
Artifact: World ledger (“Bitcoin”)
Technique: Light-weight chain analysis (headers + coinbase), mapped to photograph voltaic time
Manner
We analyzed the digital artifact identified as Bitcoin the utilize of what we identified as block headers (timestamp, target / “bits”, model) and each block’s coinbase transaction (peak, output price, and designate text).
From our outdated preliminary review we’ve constructed the next knowledge solutions:
- Expenses had been treated as: coinbase output − programmed subsidy (charges in actuality claimed by the miner).
- Timestamps had been calibrated to the planet’s photograph voltaic day and year and bounded by Bitcoin’s median-time-previous (MTP) rule.
- Evidence of tip contention (veteran blocks) became as soon as inferred from timing irregularities and MTP edge outcomes; where any veteran-block archives survived on remoted nodes, they corroborated these lessons.
- Converse retargets occurred every 2016 blocks with the actual_timespan clamped to 0.25×–4× of the two-week target, implying a per-epoch agonize change bounded to at most 4× in either course.
Findings
Discontinuance of funds
We recorded ΔH (blocks sooner than expose) to be ≈ 86,000. Coinbase outputs had been equal to the programmed subsidy, implying charges ≈ 0. Over that identical interval, realistic block spacing settled conclude to ~60–70 minutes with an extended-phase indicate of ~65 minutes.
Interpretation: Human-directed funds had ceased. Mechanical issuance persisted.
Dating: 86,000 blocks × ~65 minutes ≈ ~10.6 years sooner than our arrival.
Vitality-provide timing signatures
Post-give scheme block arrivals had been no longer memoryless. Diurnal and seasonal cadence encoded the unattended energy mix:
- Daytime clusters with boring evening gaps repeated all over low-latitude longitudes → unattended photograph voltaic with degrading storage.
- Irregular multi-hour bursts punctuated by multi-day voids at mid-latitudes → wind that faulted at some stage in storms and wasn’t reset.
- Chronic overnight presence at just a few longitudes → shrimp hydro or geothermal working islanded.
We aligned repeated intraday timestamp clusters to native photograph voltaic midday to estimate longitude bands of surviving sites. The flexibility of seasonal variation in block arrivals gave mistaken latitude bands. Real web verbalize online coordinates had been no longer recoverable.
Converse terraces (the go, timed)
Straight after the hashrate shock, realistic block time jumped from ~10 minutes to hours. Because agonize completely retargets every 2016 blocks and each epoch’s change is bounded, the chain fashioned terraces, plateaus of conclude to-fixed realistic interval separated by discrete down-steps.
Marketing consultant sequence observed in the worldwide 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.
Where residual hashrate became as soon as ≈1% of pre-tournament, Terrace A by myself spanned ~3.8 years at ~16.7 h/block. At ≈0.1%, the identical 2016-block epoch would non-public stretched to ~38 years at ~167 h/block, light at some stage in the protocol’s adjustment sure. One assert’s cadence matched the ~16–17 h/block case.
Methods on how to be taught a terrace (labored calc):
Epoch length = 2016 blocks. If the observed interval on a plateau is 16.7 hours, elapsed time for that epoch ≈ 2016 × 16.7 h ≈ 3.84 years.
Network decay captured in the file
As soon as actual clocks vanished, miner timestamps drifted in coherent regional patterns. Bitcoin’s MTP rule restricted abuse of timestamps (every contemporary block needed to be later than the median of the prior 11) but did no longer cast off drift signatures.
Interval variance and clustered MTP-bounded timestamp advances printed intermittent partitions and tip contention; when any hyperlink resumed (e.g., satellite, microwave), competing branches reconciled and completely the winning branch remained canonical.
With out preserved veteran-block archives, measured contention is a decrease sure.
Maker marks that outlived their makers
Coinbase designate strings (pool labels) and proper nonce/model fingerprints persisted for years after price assignment ended. Defaults had been by no scheme changed as soon as operators had been gone, leaving instrument/hardware families identifiable in the file. (Coinbase tags are visible thru the coinbase transaction; headers by myself attain no longer lift them.)
Dating key events (labored examples)
- “Payments ended.” Window where coinbase output = subsidy began at ΔH ≈ 86,000. Utilizing the observed ~65 min/block: ~10.6 years sooner than expose.
- First submit-shock retarget completed. The preliminary 2016-block gash price carried out ~3.8 years after the hashrate give scheme (plateau at ~16.7 h/block).
- Last detectable hydro cadence. The final evening-heavy, conclude to-fixed signature ceased ~1.9 years sooner than expose; the prior seven spring seasons showed growing multi-day outages in step with consumption clogging and flood injury.
All conversions utilize observed phase averages, no longer the nominal 10-minute target.
Interval estimate (how long machines ran)
- Minimum confirmed: >10 years after economic assignment ceased (from price give scheme to final hydro-fancy cadence).
- Plausible upper sure (regional): Multi-decadal operation at extremely low hashrate, where a single 2016-block epoch spans an extended time attributable to the adjustment sure.
The completely requirements had been: (a) a minimal of one surviving energy provide and (b) an intermittent course for some blocks to attain the worldwide community.
Abstract file
Finally, the ledger reveals when funds stopped, how energy tapered, how networks frayed, and how long unattended machines kept writing time, enough to reconstruct the tip of assignment from headers and coinbase by myself.
END OF REPORT
What readers could presumably well well light take hang of from this
- Bitcoin behaves fancy an instrument. Converse guidelines and timestamp constraints transduce physical truth, energy availability, operator absence, and community partitions into a durable time assortment.
- Physical failure, no longer ticket, ended the write. Mud, clogged displays, tripped breakers, drifting clocks, broken hyperlinks.
- These forensics observe this present day. Block spacing, price stress (thru coinbase delta), timestamp drift, and retarget dynamics are actionable diagnostics for expose-day outages and partitions.
Limits
- Longitude bands had been estimable; staunch sites had been no longer. Latitude became as soon as inferred completely coarsely from seasonality power.
- Fully remoted “shadow mining” could presumably well non-public produced blocks that by no scheme reached the worldwide ledger.
- With out preserved veteran-block archives, contention estimates are decrease bounds; some races drag away no canonical observe.
- As soon as synchronized time sources failed, MTP essentially preserved relative ordering, no longer actual civil time; long-differ calendar dates lift additional uncertainty even when intraday/seasonal building is clear.
- In very low-hashrate regimes dominated by a single surviving operator, timestamps is seemingly to be marched within MTP limits, partly preserving diurnal signatures; tainted-tests with nonce patterns and coinbase tags mitigate but attain no longer cast off this.
- Most OP_RETURN payloads had been no longer decodable at scale and had been no longer interpreted.
