And it's followed up by a 22 minute block. Whoever this monster pool hopper is please sod off. And if my conspiracy theory is right please also sod off because it's not funny.
...
The average blocks per day for the last few months are as follows: -
4.6 in October - (est. average pool hash rate = 7.8PH)
5.1 in November (est. average pool hash rate = 8.6PH)
5.2 in December (est. average pool hash rate = 10.3PH)
4.0 in January (est. average pool hash rate < 10.3PH)
5.2 so far for February (est. average pool hash rate < 9.3PH)
Looking at January as the worst month in recent times, we see that it started the month at 11.6PH and remained above 10PH until the 15th Jan (finding 65 valid blocks in 14.5 days). For the remaining 16.5 days of the month, the pool never went over 10PH (and was on average closer to 9PH) and found 57 blocks.
I personally would therefore call it luck (both good and bad) rather than being a bug in the code.
I'd rather look at it on the face of it rather than compartmentalise this based on months .... aside from the difficulty mined in certain periods, there is nothing to make a month's period any special to the bitcoin network. So here goes ...
I was only able to get data for the period 2015-01-08 18:50:01 to 2015-02-18 13:15:21 (i.e the last block) and we have:
53 Blocks where the Pool Scoring Hash Rate was below 9 Ph/s
66 Blocks where the Pool Scoring Hash Rate was above 9 Ph/s BUT below 9.5 Ph/s
23 Blocks where the Pool Scoring Hash Rate was above 9.5 BUT less than 10 Ph/sPh/s
23 Blocks where the Pool Scoring Hash Rate was above 10 Ph/s
True, When it hits the 10PH mark the blocks stop for regular users and the clock keeps running. However, behind the scenes a select VIP elite group are actually getting the same regular block times the rest of us were enjoying and splitting the rewards between them. Once they've creamed enough they then drop the hash rate below 10PH which synchronizes the system and the extra long block ends and normal service resumes.
Yes, I am crazy and I am aware I have opened the floodgates.