Bitcoin faced a stark 24 hour test recently: what would happen if global internet backbone fragmented, shutting off large portions of humanity from online? CryptoSlate conducted an analysis exploring this potential scenario — uncovering just how resilient yet vulnerable Bitcoin might be as it coped with this crisis scenario.
Imagine an undersea cable being severed, key internet hubs shutting down, satellites being disrupted and whole regions cut off from global web. On that first day of blackout, bitcoin transactions may still occur but nodes offline would struggle to broadcast new blocks and stay synced up with main chain, leading to fragmentation in mining, delayed confirmation times and possibly temporary divergence from ledger – thus giving rise to fragmentation, delayed confirmation times and divergences of ledger. CryptoSlate wrote about it this way “Even if World War III had begun, Bitcoin would survive… though perhaps not exactly as we know it now”. For their interpretation and their analysis see CryptoSlate + 1
Why Bitcoin Is Hard But Not Unbreakable
Bitcoin’s design affords it advantages when faced with disaster: it is decentralised, widely dispersed and has an established proof-of-work consensus that provides stability across a vast network of nodes and miners.
Bitpanda However, the internet itself is an integral component of bitcoin; without connectivity between nodes, miners cannot share blocks, users can’t broadcast transactions or isolated nodes may diverge. One analyst commented on this subject by noting “Bitcoin is generally unaffected by temporary local outages… however it only works without depending on an internet connection”. (Source Binance +1).
Notably, when internet blackouts occurred in mining-heavy countries like Kazakhstan in early 2022, Bitcoin’s global hashrate fell dramatically – an event which demonstrated how dependent its continued existence is upon an effective network infrastructure.
What could happen during those 24 hours?
Mining Slowdown and Chain Delays: With mining operations suspended or stopped altogether, blocks take longer to be found and propagated.
Transaction Frozen in Offline Regions: Although users in disconnected zones can still generate transactions locally, without an immediate way to transmit their messages they remain dormant indefinitely.
Risks associated with forks or ledger divergence: When two large segments of a network operate independently from each other, competing chains may form until their reconnection.
As soon as connectivity returns, nodes must synchronize again; once connected, nodes are in sync again and consensus may take some time; reconciliation could even take hours!
Price and Market Stress: Exchanges and wallets that rely on internet access could halt or suspend their operations, potentially creating liquidity and trust shocks in their market. digivestasi.com
Its importance for users and the wider economy: This development could significantly disrupt operations of exchanges and wallets dependent on internet connectivity – impacting users as well as wider industry sectors alike.
Individual users in vulnerable regions, such as those subject to government blackouts, sanctions or natural disaster-driven outages, should understand Bitcoin’s behavior during connectivity loss in order to remain financially stable during such circumstances. It must be remembered that holding bitcoin does not ensure instant liquidity during blackouts.
As one blog notes: “an isolated internet outage doesn’t usually have major repercussions unless a large percentage of miners go offline at the same time; but if it were extended for long enough Bitcoin would become worthless.” Reddit users were particularly worried.
What can be done to increase resilience?
Experts advise several mitigation strategies:
Utilizing satellite- or radio-based Bitcoin nodes as an alternative means of bypassing terrestrial internet is becoming an increasingly viable strategy.
Encourage miners to geographically disperse themselves globally to reduce regional single points of failure.
Integrating redundant communication channels such as mesh networks for essential parts of a node network.
Education of users in vulnerable regions about usage options during connectivity loss is also vital, while research into routing-attack defence (such as “SABRE” design) also seeks to protect networks against more general internet threats. *On arXiv
Conclusion The idea that Bitcoin could survive a 24-hour global internet blackout is more than an exercise; it provides insight into its real-world resilience and fragility of infrastructure it relies on. Though the network would likely limp on rather than fail completely, the experience would change how crypto world perceives connectivity risk – teaching us all an important lesson: resilience doesn’t just apply to blockchains – resilience encompasses connectivity too!
