As Carlton says, there was a 1 hour 16 minute gap between blocks 596166 and 596167. These kind of gaps have happened before and are not only possible but entirely expected given how mining works.
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In the hour before this gap, 10 blocks had been mined, which is way above average. Then we had a period which is way below average. If you look at the block production over several hours or days, it all averages out. Nothing happened except entirely normal random fluctuations, and people who don't understand how bitcoin works jumped on it as being some big news story.
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Gaps happen quite frequently......
In the hour before this gap, 10 blocks had been mined, which is way above average. Then we had a period which is way below average. If you look at the block production over several hours or days, it all averages out. Nothing happened except entirely normal random fluctuations, and people who don't understand how bitcoin works jumped on it as being some big news story.
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Last time I managed to see a gap (took nearly 40 minutes) was just after when my transaction got into a block and had to wait for that 40 minutes for another confirmation... after it, 3 block had been found in 5 minutes time.
So yes, in the end it all averaged out, but those 40 long minutes were really long for me that time
