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Fascinating, I found this article by Vitalik that explains what happened. In v0.8 they swapped from BerkleyDB to LevelDB but due to a bug the two chains started diverting.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-network-shaken-...

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Yup, we'll never know if the bug was intentional or not, and that's why the fix being centrally coordinated is scary. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake, but maybe one of the developers planned this and executed large double-spends on the 0.8 branch because he knew 0.7 would be ultimately chosen. The fact that nothing prevents this type of attack is worrisome.

You can see how the developers behaved like a central authority in the IRC logs of the bitcoin-dev channel. More info here: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-...

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