Most of us have heard of solar storms, but it’s easy to underestimate what a truly powerful one can do. During a major solar eruption, the Sun can blast Earth with a surge of charged particles and electromagnetic energy strong enough to bend our magnetic field and push unwanted electrical currents through long power lines. The most dramatic example we know of is the Carrington Event of 1859: telegraph systems sparked and failed across continents, equipment burned, and vivid auroras appeared in places where they should never be seen. Modern research suggests that a similar event today would be far more disruptive, damaging parts of the electrical grid, knocking out communication systems, and leaving entire regions suddenly and silently offline.
Now imagine what such a shock would mean for Bitcoin.
If a Carrington-scale storm took down a large portion of the global electricity and communication infrastructure, a massive share of miners could disappear from the network at the same moment. Picture a scenario where about 80% of the hashrate vanishes instantly. Blocks wouldn’t stop, but they would arrive far less frequently while the network slowly stabilizes and difficulty adjusts to the new reality.
This raises several intriguing questions. What exactly happens during this slow-block period? How robust is the system if, on top of a hashrate collapse, parts of the world become temporarily isolated and continue mining their own version of the chain? And the deeper question: is Bitcoin designed to survive an event where the vast majority of its mining power goes dark without warning?
My intention is simply to understand how the protocol behaves under such an extreme yet physically plausible scenario, and whether clearer explanations or guidance could help node operators and miners navigate it.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
