Author

Topic: Orphaned blocks in PoS coins. Are they actually a problem? (Read 357 times)

legendary
Activity: 1092
Merit: 1000
As far as I know, if coin use less time to generate block more orphaned blocks will appear in this coin.
The thing I don't understand is how orphaned blocks affect network. For example, if PoS coin have very low block time, some 5 - 10 seconds, it will lead to massive generation of orphaned blocks. Why this is a problem? Do orphaned blocks flood the network with additional data? Do they somehow responsible for  blockchain bloating? Do they delay block generation? If orphaned blocks only affect miners, why should average users care?

A small # of orphans blocks are no big deal.
They slow down the initial sync a little and increase the blocksize a little (usually not enough to worry about.)

I have seen 1 or 2 coins that have what I refer too , as an Orphan Storm.
There are so many orphans , that it has a lot of trouble syncing.
Navcoin & Mintcoin have them on occasion.

Orphan Blocks affect every Full Node that records the blockchain,
PoW miners are unaffected because they don't have to run Full Nodes that maintain the blockchain. (Only Full Nodes are affected.)
Also the Longer the blockspeed, the less Orphans that are generated, but here is the rub , the longer block speed also Decreases the # of transactions a coin can process in a given amount of time.
IE: ZEIT (30 second block speed) can Process 20X the amount of transactions as BTC (10 minute blockspeed).

If a coin's network runs smoothly , no one pays any attention to the orphans.


 Cool
legendary
Activity: 1092
Merit: 1000
POS itself is a problem Wink

Stupid Newbies are the problem.  Cheesy
Go play in traffic newbie.

 Cool
newbie
Activity: 8
Merit: 0
POS itself is a problem Wink
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
As far as I know, if coin use less time to generate block more orphaned blocks will appear in this coin.
The thing I don't understand is how orphaned blocks affect network. For example, if PoS coin have very low block time, some 5 - 10 seconds, it will lead to massive generation of orphaned blocks. Why this is a problem? Do orphaned blocks flood the network with additional data? Do they somehow responsible for  blockchain bloating? Do they delay block generation? If orphaned blocks only affect miners, why should average users care?
Jump to: