Rare Two-Block Fork Rocks Bitcoin Network

Bitcoin's mining process is often described as a race with no referee. When two miners find a block at the same second, they can both 'win' and create competing blocks.

This rare event occurred on March 24, 2026, when Antpool and Foundry USA each produced their own version of block 941,881 just 12 seconds apart. ViaBTC extended AntPool's version with block 941,882 while Foundry worked off its own tip to extend its version.

The network was genuinely split down the middle between two valid chains for one block before Foundry pulled ahead by mining six consecutive blocks on its branch. Every node reorganized to Foundry's version, and the blocks AntPool and ViaBTC had mined were orphaned.