👉 The 2013 Bitcoin Fork: When Bitcoin Faced a Real Stress Test

📆 On March 11, 2013, Bitcoin experienced a rare protocol-level hiccup: a six-hour blockchain split where two competing chains coexisted.

What Happened?

🔸Bitcoin version 0.8 introduced a bug that conflicted with older 0.7 nodes.

🔸Block 225430 triggered a chain split, with different nodes recognizing different transaction histories.

🔸The network didn’t shut down—it just lost consensus temporarily.

How It Was Fixed:

🔸Core developers identified the issue in under an hour.

🔸Instead of upgrading, miners downgraded to version 0.7 to restore chain compatibility.

🔸No rollbacks, no reversals—just a voluntary shift back to the longest valid chain.

The Takeaway:

🟠 Bitcoin didn’t need a central authority to "fix" itself. It relied on rapid, voluntary coordination—a real-world test of emergent consensus. No one was forced to comply, yet the network converged.

🟣 This was proof that #Bitcoin isn’t just code. It’s a living system, resilient by design #nostr.