Block 170,000 gave miners 84.7 hours of notice, the most of any Nockchain upgrade

Nockchain’s developers merged “Security batch 3” on October 19 at 15:22 UTC.¹ Block 170,000 followed on October 23 at 04:00:23 UTC.⁴ The pull request had opened at 15:20:05 UTC on October 19 and named that height, so miners and node operators had 84.7 hours to prepare.¹⁴ Logos held the previous best, at 77.1 hours.¹⁰ The developers earn credit for the extra time, and for shipping a written deployment list and protocol note with the merge.¹²

What changed for miners

Both lanes got a new starting point at block 170,000. The ZK reference rate became 100 billion Tip5 hashes a second, up from 56 billion.³ The AI reference rate doubled from 10 to 20 EMAC/s.³ Each lane’s difficulty re-anchored to the median time of block 169,999, and later blocks adjust as usual.³

Block 170,000 also switched on updated checks for AI proofs. They keep the existing proof program and trusted setup, so the proof format stays the same.²³

Two parts of the package applied on upgrade, ahead of 170,000. Updated transaction checks started at once, and so did a list of fixed block IDs for heights 126,000 to 154,499.¹² Private gRPC access now asks for an operator credential, or an explicit single-user opt-out, and listens on the local machine only.¹

How the first blocks went

The 501 block intervals from 170,000 to 170,501 took 94,697 seconds, an average of 189.0 seconds a block.⁴⁵ The protocol aims for 150. Block 170,501, the reward cut, arrived at 06:18 UTC on October 24.⁵

Blocks have sped up since. Blocks 170,750 to 170,850, mined by 21:38 UTC on October 24, averaged 124.5 seconds.⁸ Nockscan’s ZK reading at block 170,855 (21:41 UTC) was 12.36 million proofs a second against a target of 12.65 million. Its AI reading at block 170,856 (21:42 UTC) was 11.11 EMAC/s against a target of 11.00.⁶⁷ Rates before and after 170,000 sit on different starting points, so Nocktane does not compare them.

Lane	Reference rate from 170,000	Realized, Oct 24
ZK, proofs a second	10.00 million	12.36 million
AI, EMAC/s	20	11.11

Fig. 01 Reference rates from the protocol notes next to the rates Nockscan measured at blocks 170,855 (ZK) and 170,856 (AI) on Oct 24, 21:41 and 21:42 UTC. The ZK figure is Nockscan's raw rate divided by 10,000. Sources: nockchain/nockchain, Nockscan

What stays the same

Bridge withdrawal processing stays disabled, as the pull request says.¹ The roadmap lists withdrawals for Q1 2027.⁹

The record so far

Six forks have now activated since July 25. Two were emergency fixes, with 5.3 and 2.7 hours of notice. Four were planned, with 77.1, 10.7, 14.8 and now 84.7 hours.¹⁰ The full tracker holds each one with its sources.