Editorial · Network Stories
Bitcoin network stories
A network story is not a retelling. It is an account built from the chain and from the public record around it: the block that carried an event, the release note that described a change, the mailing-list thread where a decision was argued. Every story here is filed under one of four strands — early blocks, congestion episodes, protocol incidents and notable transactions — and every story page carries a timeline of the dated record, a list of the primary sources it is drawn from, and a plain statement of what the record does and does not settle.
The rule for this hub is that a fact and a reading of it are never presented as the same thing. Where a story describes what happened, it cites the block or the document that shows it. Where it explains why something mattered, it says so, and it does not dress an interpretation up as a finding of the chain.
Early Blocks
Early Blocks
The first years of the chain, when the rules were still being tested in public and the record of what happened is short enough to read block by block.
Lead storyBlock 0 · 3 January 2009The Genesis BlockBlock zero, mined on 3 January 2009, and the newspaper headline its coinbase transaction still carries.Congestion Episodes
Congestion Episodes
The periods when demand for block space outran the supply of it, and what the mempool, the fee market and the block-weight rule did in response.
Lead storyDecember 2017The 2017 CongestionA sustained backlog of unconfirmed transactions pushed fees to record levels and made block space the year's central argument.Protocol Incidents
Protocol Incidents
The occasions when the software or the consensus rules themselves were the problem, and how the network converged on a single chain again.
Lead storyBlock 74,638 · 15 August 2010The 2010 Value-Overflow BugBlock 74,638 carried a transaction that created 184 billion bitcoin, and the network reorged it away within hours.Notable Transactions
Notable Transactions
Individual transactions that are remembered because of what they moved, when they moved it, or what they were used to buy.
Lead storyBlock 57,043 · 22 May 2010The Pizza TransactionBlock 57,043 recorded 10,000 bitcoin spent on two pizzas, the first documented purchase of a physical good for bitcoin.Every story filed under this hub
Each entry names the block height or date the story concerns. Every story is one click from here.
- Block 0 · 3 January 2009The Genesis BlockBlock zero, mined on 3 January 2009, and the newspaper headline its coinbase transaction still carries.
- Block 210,000 · 28 November 2012The First HalvingBlock 210,000, mined on 28 November 2012, cut the block subsidy from 50 to 25 bitcoin on schedule.
- December 2017The 2017 CongestionA sustained backlog of unconfirmed transactions pushed fees to record levels and made block space the year's central argument.
- 2023–2024The 2023 Inscription WaveOrdinal inscriptions filled block space with data, lifting fees and reviving the debate over what a block is for.
- Block 74,638 · 15 August 2010The 2010 Value-Overflow BugBlock 74,638 carried a transaction that created 184 billion bitcoin, and the network reorged it away within hours.
- 11–12 March 2013The March 2013 Chain SplitA database change in version 0.8 split the chain in two for six hours, and the network chose the longer chain over the older rule.
- Block 57,043 · 22 May 2010The Pizza TransactionBlock 57,043 recorded 10,000 bitcoin spent on two pizzas, the first documented purchase of a physical good for bitcoin.
- 2011–presentLarge-Value TransfersThe transactions that moved the largest amounts of bitcoin, and why a large transfer is not evidence of a sale.
The reference pages behind the stories
The stories explain what happened. These hold the underlying record and the standards the accounts are written to.